A friend of mine who has been a great customer brought me his HP m8000 Vista machine. It seemed that his DVD-RW quit working suddenly. The thing will play DVDs and CDs just fine. But when I try to burn anything, I get a message that states "you do not have a drive capable of burning cd-dvds" I have tried swapping drives and every other trick I could find to no avail. The drive shows up in the bios and device manager. I've also updated everthing but I can't get this spawn of satan drive to burn. It would be nice to hear some fresh comments from the board. Let me know if you need more detail regarding the machine itself. Thanx

Well if you've swapped drives and it does the same thing, it's software related. I would try and install a CD Burning program like CDBurnerXPPRO or find ASPI drivers for Vista and see if those work. When did it stop working? I'm assuming that they have System Restore enabled (which works quite well in Vista IME), that might solve it. It sounds to me like maybe a driver is loaded wrong or the CD burning layer is not working within Vista.

When in doubt, format! lol

Firstly, thanx for the response. I've tried several burn engines but nothing works. And to top it off, my customer tells me he bought the thing and didn't get any disks or literature with it. WTF is up with that??? Oddly, the comp will burn a restore disk but it came out with alot of missing files; making the disk into a nice coaster for my beverage to sit on. I'm starting to think about having him buy a copy of Vista home premium and when in doubt, format!

No, don't buy a copy of Home Premium... do you have an Anytime Upgrade Disc? That will work to do a straight install with the product key on the machine. You can also get the DVD from Microsoft for 9 bucks!

https://na.windowsanytimeupgradestore.com/W...IRECT/Home.aspx

Just select "Windows Vista Home Basic" from pull down, then "Choose Windows Vista Home Premium", then "Do you have a Windows® Anytime Upgrade disc?*" (select NO), then click the red X by "Windows Vista Home Basic to Windows Vista Home Premium" then you are left with the disc alone. Fill out the info, they will ship the disc. It contains all versions of Vista 32bit and 64bit. I have mine, works like a charm!

-Scott