I recently installed this drive into my desktop and am able to watch DVD's on it. I went to burn a DVD however and it won't recognize my blank media. I bought Optodisc DVD-RW 1x. Any helpful hints? thanks. John
this is actually a dvd-r,-rw,+r,+rw. It's the update to the Pioneer 105 model that's referred to often on this board.
What exactly do you mean by "it won't recognize my blank media"? When you enter a DVD, there is no disc shown on your Dor whatever your drive label is)drive? If this is the problem, try opening the tray, and closing it again. Also, try using DVD-R discs. You will have much better success.
I have this drive and I use PioData DVD-R 4X to burn DVD's and they work just fine. At first, I was having a bunch of errors. You can't recognize blank media in Windows Explorer or in the actual burning program? What Windows OS are you running and what programs are you using to burn? If I want to read blank media, I have to format it first (only for reading in Windows Explorer). If you are trying to use a burning program like DVD X Copy Gold and it won't read it, then it is supposedly b/c Pioneer doesn't have a recent firmware update (at least that what 321 Studios had claimed to me). I have found that the best way to burn DVD's is by using DVD Shrink and then using Nero to burn the DVD. If you use the bundled software that came w/ the drive, then you may get a serious number of problems b/c the software seems to be really unstable. I am still playing around and trying to get it to work, but I've only had minimal sucess w/ Ulead. Hope this helps (I was frustrated for a week or so before I finally got it to work).
I actually thought that I would be able to open Windows explorer (windows xp professional) and drag and drop like I do with a cd. Right now, I'm using dvd decryptor and then pinnacle instant copy. The whole process goes smoothly until it tries to write the dvd image to the dvd-writer. at that point it asks me to put in a "cd" with enough space to accomodate the file(s). I have created one DVD successfully, but now every attempt results in the above. I'd like to use the 50 dvd-rw I purchased, but I can't even figure out how I would reformat one considering it doesn't register in my computer --> dvd drive.
I've had the same problem with the DVR-106 from Pioneer. I was able to burn 4 DVD's using Nero and now the exact same discs (Memorex and Sony +R) will not work. In My Computer (Win XP Home SP1) the DVD-RW drive changes to a CD-ROM drive when a blank DVD disc is put in. It will read everything including burned DVD's and it will still burn CD's, just not DVD's. Any ideas?
Crap disks are Crap, that is the theme of most posts i have seen on here. I use Bulkpaq Orange (70p each) with this drive and it works a dream. Buy a couple of good disks upgrade your firmware and try again, if that does not solve the problem then look deeper
he's right, it was disc incompatibility. Apparently the DVD-RW weren't compatible yet the DVD-R's were. I returned them, bought new discs which were the same price and I'm burning like crazy.