External DVD drive

[Jerry B]

I have a HP Pavilian a1253w with a AMD64 Athlon processor. My DVD RW does not work. I have spent hours on phone with tech support, they even sent me a new driver, still doesn't work. If I buy an external one will it work?
My CD RW works fine.

[bocephus_k6]

Hi Jerry, my first question would be do you have the DVD RW software on the computer, and if so what does it do when you try and burn a DVD.?

Brian

[ListerDiesel]

If the DVD was in the machine to start with, then it should work as a reader if not a writer, does it read disks?

If it reads but doesn't write, then it's probably the software. Get a copy of NERO installed and try again. None of the Windows OS's do DVD burning IIRC, you need specialist software.

If it doesn't read either, then it is not recognised in the BIOS as a drive, the device itself is faulty, the cable is off the back of the drive or you have the device master/slave jumper in the wrong position.

Lots of things to check.

Peter