I've been having problems with my burner since upgrading from 98SE to XP Pro.

The burner is a HP cd-writer 9140i. It has worked flawlessly from the moment I bought it, until I upgraded my computer's OS.

I was originally instructed not to install any software, as XP has integrated cd-burning software. From a fresh install, XP and my burner have completely refused to work together. Not only can I not burn discs with the drive, but the drive doesn't recognize any discs put in it, be it commercial or cd-r burnt.

From here I go to HP's support site, and download the RecordNow software that they distribute with burners. I installed it, tried to use the drive, and nothing's changed.

I tossed the XP CD into the burner, and rebooted. I figured, if it is indeed a conflict between XP and the burner, it should still boot from the CD after POST. This confirmed that the drive isn't physically damaged, and can still read CDs.

The next step, obviously, was to see how it behaved in safe mode. I tried to take advantage of XP's burning option in safe mode, only to find that it's not present. I then loaded up HP's RecordNow software, and it worked perfectly. It also read the discs without any problems. So there's some conflict in XP that's gumming up the works, in regards to the burner, that's not loaded in safe mode.

At this point, I'm thoroughly confused. At least now I have an option when I want to burn discs, but let's be honest, is dropping to safe mode everytime I need to burn a CD really an acceptable solution?

If anyone has any ideas, experience, or crazy theories on how to get my hardware and OS to mesh again, please help!

System:

Athalon XP 2400+
Asus A7V8X-Lan/A Mobo
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
768 DDR 333 Ram
2 Maxtor Hard Disks (c: and d
DVD-Rom (e
HP cd-writer 9140i (f
2 more hard drives on an expansion IDE card (g: and h
450 watt power supply
:confused:

You can disable XPs inbuilt burning mode to allow the HP burnware to work:

Here's a registry edit from http://www.theeldergeek.com/cd_burning.htm

[Start] [Run] [Regedit]
Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer
Modify/Create the Value Name [NoCDBurning] according to the Value Data listed below.
Data Type: REG_DWORD [Dword Value] // Value Name: NoCDBurning
Value Data: [0 - Enable Burning / 1 - Disable Burning]
Exit Registry and Reboot

Enable/Disable CD Burning for the Local Machine

[Start] [Run] [Regedit]
Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\policies\Explorer
Modify/Create the Value Name [NoCDBurning] according to the Value Data listed below.
Data Type: REG_DWORD [Dword Value] // Value Name: NoCDBurning
Value Data: [0 - Enable Burning / 1 - Disable Burning]
Exit Registry and Reboot



hth

Well, that successfully disabled the cd-burning software in Explorer, but the CD burner still isn't working in normal XP modes.

You may want to check with HP to see if there are any XP issues:
A quick search of the HP site gave there two pages.
http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg40447.html

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/swindexes/hpcdwriter22590_swen.html


hth