Then discovered Nero wouldn't recognize blank media in the drive, neither CD nor DVD, so I moved the drive to another PC and it has worked fine so far:
Now DVDinfo has picked up the serial number, maybe that's a good signal - no serial number may mean a hardware problem. The internal interface being UNSPECIFIED should have given it away I suppose - I didn't really assimilate what I scanned when looking at the report.
The mainboard it doesn't work in is an ASUS A7V600-X. It's only got Serial ATA drives in it, no IDE - the burner is primary. I'm wondering how to fix the problem, as I want to use the burner with this motherboard - don't know if it's a drive or mobo issue, nor what to do to establish which.
C.

(in reply to S33K3R)

Your ASUS A7V600-X has 2 x UltraDMA 133/100 IDE Ports so have you got them turned on in the Bios ???
Look Here for more info on your Motherboard and the latest drivers !!!

(in reply to londonerOK)

It looks to me that his problem is not fixed. The feature set for that drive is being shown incorrectly on both programs, thought the last screenshot is looking correct. You have some hardware conflict on your computer or some type of corruption it would seem, preventing the system from getting complete valid data from the drive.

(in reply to S33K3R)

>>have you got them turned on in the Bios ???
You bet! Turning off the chips would render any IDE device invisible, unless DVDinfo has super Olympic track-jumping powers...

(in reply to Laffin Assassin)

quote:

You have some hardware conflict on your computer or some type of corruption it would seem, preventing the system from getting complete valid data from the drive.

That's why I posted here - a thankyou to the author of DVDinfo in case she/he can improve the prog using my experience. For instance, if DVDinfo reports the interface as UNSPECIFIED, maybe that ought to be in red, so it glares at us mere muggles - what else could it possibly mean?

Also, how come parts of DVDinfo are correct and parts wrong? Is the drive returning corrupt info in this mobo, and if so, are the corrupted parts the result of a distinct operation by the prog? If there was an extra integrity test DVDinfo could make to cover this type of event, that'd be great.

I vaguely suspect it's a problem in the VIA chipset. I've seen one or two issues with SATA only configs before - seems as if mobo architecture doesn't want to let go of IDE hard drives...

Still don't know what to do. Gotta figure it's the mobo as the drive works elsewhere. Need a means to diagnose...
C.

(in reply to nicw)