I have an HP DVD640 DVD burner in my DIY PC. After a month or so of using this burner, I started getting "Communication Error" pop ups so headed off to the HP website for help. I downloaded and installed all of the latest updates for this drive. I tried to burn another disk, but got the "Communication Error" message again about half way through the burn process. After spending the rest of my day on the phone with HP, they finally had me send my drive in for repair. Today, I was in awe as I opened the shipping box to find a new drive inside (or so I thought). When I pulled the Burner's box from the shipping box, I could see it had already been opened. I thought, "OK, they just put my drive in a used box is all." I would have had no problem with that, but it turns out they did in fact send me another burner. This burner is scratched up on all five of it's metallic sides. The faceplate has a small chip in it. You can imagine my frustration when I pulled a half mangled burner from the box like that. I just wanted my beautiful unscratched, unchipped burner back. I knew this would make my computer look like crap. At any rate, I put the burner in the computer. I have this drive set as master on an IDE cable and have a second drive, Sony DVD ROM, set to slave on the same cable. I am able to burn to CD-R's and am able to burn lightscribe lables, but am unable to burn to DVD's. When I put a blank DVD in the drive, the drive's light comes on and stays on for about 6 or 7 mintues. If I try to burn a DVD with my movie authoring software, it says "Please insert another disk!". If I try to burn data to a DVD with Sonic Record Now (the software that came with the drive and the same software I was using for data backups before this mishap), it says "Please insert a blank disk and try again. I know these disks are blank. In fact, these DVD's are from the same batch as the one's I used before this problem started. Also, my PC will not boot with a DVD in the drive. Just before the Windows Loading Screen, my burner light comes on (though I can't hear it doing anything), and the curser flashes in the top corner. If I take the blank DVD out, the PC boots just fine. I just went back to the HP website to search for more help and/or a phone number, but their support page is down. I'm sure you can guess what kind of mood I'm in, right?
I think I've ranted and raved about HP long enough. Does anyone here know why the blank DVD's make my drive go haywire?
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