How do I know if my DVD burner is dead?

[ydekmekji]

It's burning something, but I can't read it. However, I can read commercial DVDs. When I use ULEAD or DVD Decrypter, it tells me that it burned succesfully, but I can't read what it burned. When I use NERO, it never burns successfully. I have burned about 200-250 DVDs in the lifetime of this burner (Sony DRU-710A). Are these symptoms of a dead DVD burner? (I ran the Sony checks on it and it claims that it passed all the tests, but...)

[groover km]

Have you changed to a different (cheaper?) media brand? I made 100's of coasters before settling on Memorex for my lite-on drive. Not the cheapest, but I never have burning problems.

[elite]

Prob the media, but can you play the discs you burnt on another dvd player? - could be that it's burning ok, just not reading...

[nemulate]

Are you sure your not using a batch of crap media? Do you have any different writable dvds to use?

[ydekmekji]

Thanks for the responses. I have burned fine on the media that I currently have and no problems until recently. ... I don't think it's crap media--i haven't changed the way I record on gbpvr

[ejeffers]

I'd get one of those lense cleaner things, the little CD's with the brushes attached. And before that. id try a good ol' firmware upgrade. Sometimes drives just stop working, but a firmware upgrade always seems to do the trick.

[ShiningDragon]

You should NEVER use a cleaning-CD for a DVD-ROM (!)

The brushes on the underside are too heavy for this business! The best way is to clean with warm water and a q-tip.

[ydekmekji]

Well, I don't know, but I bought a new one, and it works. Maybe I'll let my old one take a little break. I mean, I did burn 300 burns, and a lot of those were experimental as i was trying to learn how to use GBPVR. probably burned too many back to back dvds... who knows, but now new one works

[ejeffers]

I've used a cleaning CD many Times to clean a DVD player, and it has always worked fine for me, and improved playback.