Need Help regarding my HP 8250i CD Burner

[DJ_Tet]

Hello. I hope someone here can help. Here is my situation.

My CD Burner is an HP 8250i and was very capable of reading and writing full 80 min. CD's. A couple of weeks ago, I foolishly stuck two cd's in the tray at the same time, and my PC crapped out on me. After reinstalling my operating system and cd drivers, the CD Drive will only recognize 74 min CDs and will only write 74 min worth of CD on 80 min CDs.

I have tried re-installing the drivers and even flashed the drive to a 9300i which increased the burn speed from 4x to 10x. It still will not recognize any media as more than 74 min long. I have tried three different types of 80 min CDs and also tried the same media that my burner recognized before the crash.

Is there a possibility that the drive might be broken? Wouldn't the drive just not function if it was broken?

I seem to remember doing something special to the drive when I got it (a year and a half ago) to get it to recognize 80 min CDs, but I have been unable to recall what I did or even find info on the web. Does anyone have any ideas? Remember it's a HP 8250i drive. Thanks.

[rangeral]

Wouldn't know about that but would consider myself lucky it works at all, try a search on google.com see if it turns up anything.

[DJ_Tet]

I guess you're probably right. The thing is though, if I knew it was broken I would replace it, but since it burns 74 min CDs, makes me think I can fix it. Google hasn't helped so far but I'll keep trying, thanks.

BTW when I place 80 min CD's in the burner, it sees them as 74 min CDs. I've tried this with three separate types of 80 min media, so that would be a big coincidence if they were all bad batches...

[rmanet]

Whoa - can't believe the problem with the drive required you to reinstall everything?

What kind of burner software, etc. are you using - some of the programs rquire you to indicate the cdr drive properties or type of media you are you using - hope that helps.

That not being the case, do you just get the typical drive not ready error, or what?

[DJ_Tet]

No I don't get any errors, that's the strange thing. The drive just acts like I have a 74 min (650 meg) CD in there and burns accordingly. I have used three different types of 80 min media, but the drive recognizes them as 74 min CDs.

[rmanet]

Like I said before - check your burner software; somewhere it references the source and destination drive and with some programs you have to tell it you have other than 74 min CDs loaded and it will burn accordingly.

Hope that helps.

[rangeral]

Sounds like good advice, check that forgot about properties.

[Lebo]

As a last hope, you could email support at HP.

Yeah probably a bad idea.