[bentherat]

I just replaced the cd-r drive in my Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop with a DVD drive. The DVD drive is for a Dell and I purchased it from a refurb shop. It was easy, just remove a screw and put the new drive in, screw it back down. It reads DVD movies that I put in just fine. However, when I put in a blank cd to make a photo cd, it says "Please insert a blank disk."

I don't really know anything about DVD drives. This is my first one. Can I only use blank DVDs or should it use cd-rs as well? The people I purchased it from are no help. They told me "maybe you need to install software." But wouldn't the drive not read at all if there was no software? If I do need to install software, is this just drivers? Or a program? I have Roxio 5 but it says I need an upgrade.

Thanks for any help!

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Sounds like you've bought a DVD-ROM. DVD-ROMs have no writing ability, they can only only read, therefore there is nothing on a blank CD for it to talk to.
If you had bought a DVD Writer, it should know that there's a disk in there and tell you there's 700Mb free on it. This is not the case with DVD-ROM drives.

[Neil Jones]

Sounds like you've bought a DVD-ROM. DVD-ROMs have no writing ability, they can only only read, therefore there is nothing on a blank CD for it to talk to.
If you had bought a DVD Writer, it should know that there's a disk in there and tell you there's 700Mb free on it. This is not the case with DVD-ROM drives.

[jeffk813]

It would seem to me that if it were only a reader, it wouldn't be telling him to insert a blank disk.

Are you sure you got a DVD writer and not a CD-R/W drive with DVD read capability? These drives will read DVDs, but when you put a disk in it to write to, it will only recognize CR-R/W disks, not DVD-Rs.

Do you have a part number for the drive to give us? We could look up the drive's specs for you and possibly help further.

Another possibility would be that the media you're using isn't very compatible with your drive. Some drives are picky about the brand of blank used in them.

[Neil Jones]

You can receive "please insert a blank disk" on read-only drives depending on how intelligent the software is. Some will just assume you have a writer, others check first.

[bentherat]

Thanks for all the help! I checked and yes, it is a read only drive. I never checked because I didn't know they made such a thing. I figured if it was for a laptop, it would do both.
The company is willing to exchange it for me. This time I will make sure to buy the right kind!
Thanks!!!

[shard92]

Also as a sidenote if you are running windows xp sp2 or later you may need to get a newer version of roxio or get a different program all together.... I've seen issues with version 5 not being fully compatible with xp sp2.