DVD-RW drive help?

Question

I am having trouble with my DVD-RW drive on my laptop. Here's the problem. After inserting a blank dvd or cd in my drive, the drive reads CD drive instead of DVD-RW drive. When I right-click and go to properties, it says it is a dvd-r disc, but it has 0 bytes of free space and 0 bytes of used space. If I double click on the CD Drive, I get a message that says "DLA cannot use this blank media until it has been formatted. Would you like to format this media now?" If I click yes, it tries to format and then gives me a fatal write error.

What does DLA mean? When I checked the driver details i found that the driver was dated 2001. Would updating the driver fix this? If so, how do I update the driver?

Sorry, should have said. Its a Dell Inspiron 9300.

Answer 1

DLA is by far the most popular packet writing software, partly because it once was (and still is) available for free with many CD and DVD recording drives. DLA had been originally programmed by Veritas software engineers, and later sold to Sonic Solutions in 2002. Up to the present, both Veritas and Sonic Solutions have released a lot of custom versions of DLA to various OEM manufacturers under various OEM agreements. Most of the branded CD/DVD recording drives, both retail and OEM, now come with their custom version of DLA as a supplemental software on the driver disk. For example, there are HP, IBM, and Sony versions available. Undoubtedly, there are more. All the variations are actually built on the same codebase and technically have very little difference from the original DLA.

The best software for cd burning is Nero Burning rom... Basically DLA tries to use the CD like a GIANT floppy drive and works best with CDRW discs and now CDR's ... It's best to not use DLA but instead to use sofware such as nero burning rom, or Easy CD Creator.

Answer 2

Assuming you are using Windows XP or Vista, go to Device Manager, right click the drive and select uninstall, reboot, Windows will reinstall the driver for the device and that might correct the problem. I had this happen once, it worked for me.

If that doesn't work then you may well have to get a newer driver from the manufacturer.

Answer 3

CD RW can write a CD with max space of 700 MB while a DVD RW can write a DVD which can have a max space of 4GB

Answer 4

Yes, try updating the driver.
Right click my computer, go to properties
In XP, click the hardware tab, then device manager.
Click the + next to CD/dvd drives. then right click your drive and click update driver. OR:
Go to DVD drives manufactures website and download the new driver updated for your DVD

Answer 5

First of all, i thinlk that you should take and unistall the dvd-rw. then reinstall the dvd-rw. go to my computer, then right click on the dvd-rw drive. then click uninstall. then shut down and restart the laptop. once you have logged back, you shold see a icon saying new hardware. then follow the on screen instructions. if this does not appear, go to control panel, then click add new hardware. then the computer will search for the connected hardware. then you dvd-rw should work, if not you may need a new dvd-rw drive.

Answer 6

What type of PC/Lap top are we talking about? If it is a hp you can go to hp and search your lap top model and it will show you all the driver up dates.

This sounds like the cd you are using is the wrong type. You need to have cd's that are RW to work best with data and media.

DLA = Drive Letter Access

This article talks about PC's and needing to have CDRW disc's.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&docname=bph07940

Hope this helps!

Answer 7

search for the latest version of firmware at manufacturer's site , either you get it in device properties or at dxdiag/ system information or search online.
after applying this all & above suggestions you can go for H/W operations---
clean the lense assembly & cables by using Iso Propale Alchole.
test the drive with another machine.