cd/dvd comdo Should I have to do this?

[rwest]

My Compaq Presario came with a cd-rw/dvd-rw combo drive. I mostly burn dvds, so I always forget to change the properties setting to enable cd writing on my drive.(always a pain till I remember )

Anyway, when I want to burn dvds I have to manually disable this feature. I was curious to if it is common practice to have to change this setting on combo drives. It really is just a simple setting, but one would think the drive should be able to recognize what type of media was in it. Or is this a driver/software issue?

I use DVD Decrypter to burn DVD's, Windows media player to burn music files and the Windows writing wizard to write data files.

[BipolarBill]

It's not just combo drives. I have 3 burners in my system and only one can have recording enabled (this is *only* for the XP writing wizard BTW). Whichever one is enabled, Nero with throw a "power calibration" error if I try to use Nero to burn with it.

As far as I know, the only "combo" drives are DVD-ROM/CDR. DVD burners can burn CDs and always could. We don't call them combo drives.

If you have more than one burner, set the CD drive as recordable and simply avoid using the XP writing wizard on the DVD. Instead, use your main burning app.

[rwest]

DVD burners can burn CDs and always could.

That's what I thought. Compaq calls it a combo drive, so I did. Love those marketing guys.

Didn't know that about the writing wizard, now it all makes sense.

I have an open bay I planned to add a dvd-rom for faster burning, maybe it'll be a cd-rw drive now. Not sure. Any way I still got 3-4 months before my wife's gonna let me crack the case. Warranty stuff. All I wanted to do was blow out the dust, and she just about came unglued. Sheesh!

Thanx for the insight BP.

[BipolarBill]

If you want to, you can disable the wizard in Administrative tools - Services. It's called the IMAPI CD-burning service.