Plextor 708a Issues

[jpvrabec77]

Hey everyone, I need some help here:

Within the last couple weeks I've all the sudden been unable to read or write to CD's of any type (ROM, -R, -RW) in my plextor px-708a (firmware 1.06). The strange thing is that it reads and writes DVDs (+R, +RW) just fine. When I put in a cd, the light blinks amber twice, but won't spin up. Clicking on the drive in windows explorer shows an empty folder. And nero infodrive says that no disk is inserted. Could this be a power supply issue? Are there separate lasers for the CD and DVD and the CD one went bad?

The drive is only 6 months old.

My system:
Gigabyte 8p1000 GT mobo (i865G)
Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.6 ghz stock
Maxtor 80GB HD
1 GB pc3200 crucial ram
350 watt generic ps
evga 6800 NU graphics
(the optical mentioned above)
windows xp pro sp1

Thanks for the help!

 

[Richard98]

Have you installed any packet writing software (InCD,etc)? I had similar problems until I uninstalled Nero InCD.

 

[jpvrabec77]

I had that installed for a while with no problems, BUT, just in case, I uninstalled InCD last night and still having the issue.

 

[PCHPlayer]

Sounds like the drive is going bad. RMA it now!
The first Plextor 16-10-40 CD burner I had went bad with the exact symptoms. As I recall there is a procedure on the Plextor website to determine whether you should RMA the drive.
Pextor's RMA process is easy.

 

[jpvrabec77]

thanks a lot. I called tech support and they gave me an RMA#. I'm glad it's on warranty, or I'd hold out for the dvd-dl media to drop in price and get a dual layer burner.
anyone with any experience with those yet?

 

[Big Lar]

In Plex Tools, is an option to disable all but DVD burns, perhaps that was hit by mistake?

 

[jpvrabec77]

i actually didn't have plex tools installed, and really hadn't been messing with any settings anyways. But thanks!