I havent been able to get my burner to work with any of the programs ive tried. NTI cd maker pro 2000 and acoustica both say no cdrw drive found, nero 5.5.6.9 came with the burner and it usually freezes while scanning scsi/ide bus, but has made it past that once only to freeze a minute later.
I have already tried the aspi programs. Also after nero freezes if i try to open it again without rebooting it will show up in the task manager but not on screeen.

Any suggestions?

I just looked at the diagram on the instructions that came with the burner and it says if i have one hard drive, one cdrom and one cdrw to make the hard disk the master on primary ide, cdrom the slave on primary ide, and put the cdrw as master on secondary ide, but i dont think my cables will reach like that, would this make a difference?

I disconnected the cdrom drive and now nero will load fine, but when i try to write cd a message pops up that says please insert blank media, i had the cdrw that came with the software in the drive.

have you burnt anything before with that drive? Is it new?
What are your system specs?

I havent burnt anything yet, it is new. I have an amd k6 500mhz, winME, not sure about the motherboard but i know its cheap, has integrated graphics, onboard sound and its a gateway computer, 184mb ram.

When i put a blank disc in the drive and check properies it says no space used, none available, if i doubleclick the drive it says please insert a disc.

Have you made sure that your cables are in properly! Try putting your Cdwritter as a slave!
Make sure your aspi layers are installed correctly!
I had a problem similar to this but with a creative drive! IT was brand new as well and all it did was write coasters since it was broken! Maybe your drive is broken as well. But before concluding this do th suggested above. And good luck!

I finally got it to burn a cdr, but it doesnt read the cdrw that came bundled and says please insert a disc. The only way i can get it to work is with the cdrom drive disconnected (which doesnt matter because i dont really use it) and a cdr.