When I insert a DVD disc (either a blank one or one which is movie) into my DVD RW drive nothing happens. The light blinks a few times after closing the tray but then nothing. If I look at the drive under MY COMPUTER it states the drive is empty. I was fine for months with this drive but just yesterday I started having issues. If I insert a CD into this drive then it is recognized and I can play. If I take a DVD that wouldn't play in this drive and insert it into the DVD Read Only drive then it plays fine.

Is there anything I can do, other than getting a new drive, that will allow my DVD RW drive to recognize DVD discs?

If you look in the Device Manager do you see any errors (red or yellow symbols) under DVD/CD-ROM drives?

You can try uninstalling the drive in the Device Manager, when you restart the computer the installation wizard will recognize it as new hardware and will asign drivers to it.

Start> right click on My Computer> Manage> Device Manager. Cick in the box to the left of the or the DVD/CD-ROM and the different drives will be seen. If you right click on the drive that you are having the problem you will have the option to uninstall the drive.

Some other things you can try:

• If you recently installed some burning software, uninstall it.
• Use the fix given on this Microsoft page.
• Clean the laser using one of those drive cleaning kits.

I am also experiencing the exact same problem. One of the methods I have found to work around this is to keep ejecting and inserting the drive until it loads the DVD. Try it, it may work for you, usually for me, on the fifth time of re-inserting, it loads and works fine. If this doesn't work and you can't fix this and you have tried everything, including what the other members have just said, then you might have no choice but to get a new DVD burner. They are fairly cheap, so, don't bother getting the drive repaired.