CD Burner not working anymore.

So I have this old CD burner at home (a sony x8) Its about three years old. This weekend I tried to burn a mp3 cd. It took about 20 minutes to complete. I ejected the cd and I could see that there was some data on the cd but when I pop it in my cd-rom drive its empty. even tried it in the mp3 player in the car, it reads it as a mp3 cd but finds no data. I used Easy CD Creator 5 and I'm sure its properly installed, so are the drivers. A friend told me my burner may have died, he said they don't last forever, I guess the laser inside died or something. Anyone had this problem?

by the way that smiley is supposed to be a "8".

My burner died... won't read or write anything...

I just went out n' got a new 52x32x52 burner a coupla weeks ago.. Only cost 45 bucks.

yeah that's what I'm thinking of doing also, funny thing is it still reads normal cd, just can write.

I am on my third burner for this box, it's the only one that actualy worked well so far.

I'd say spend the extra money and get a good one, unless you want to replace it in a few weeks.

If your using Windows XP.. Not sure about now but i know when XP first came out there was trouble with Easy CD Creator 5, you had to choose not to install the Packet writing software when installing to make it work properly. Not sure if they have fixed it and can't remember what the packet writing software was called.. DirectCD? Something like that, you probably noticed it when installing but didn't think about it, its the one that allows you to copy a file to a cd in windows explorer(not using xp burn interface). I personally use Nero as I had alot of trouble with Easy CD Creator and XP.

I had the same problemw ith a 4x yamaha. They only last so long i guess. Mines did the same thing would start writing and not really do anyhting. Poor thing thought it could still burn . . . what a shame

Yeah, I quit installing the PacketCD/DirectCD stuff years ago.. Since burners have started hitting 30x and higher speeds, it's a useless feature, and just screws things up.

I quit using it while 2x was still the fastest burner you could get, heh.

wern't those the days when burners would cost $2000+?

Naah, my 2x IDE was about $500 when I bought it... I got a 2x SCSI a coupla years later, that was only $300 at the time (16x I think was the fastest burner you could get when I got my SCSI).

I read in another post that some new "copyright protected" cds can actually damage your drive. Maybe you should check who used your drive last before it quit burning.
For what its worth I bought a TDK 12x burner when 12x was the newest thing (I think a few years ago), and its in an old AT box. It still rips cds like crazy to this day, and I have burned hundreds of cds for myself and others never with any problem.

I don't think they'd legally be allowed to physically damage hardware if you used a "Copy Protected" CD.

There are WAY too many legitimate reasons for wanting to copy an original CD that this would simply not be allowed.

Somebody may want to copy the CD so that they can keep their originals safe, and simply use the copy to install the software (Understandable if you've just spent $650 on Photoshop CS or something, and don't want to risk your originals getting damaged)..

It's like some of the other software vendors who wanted to make your entire system crash, just delete the FAT, if it had detected it had been cracked. The law soon put a stop to that idea.

Some games, such as Morrowind, are routinely patched with a No-CD crack, even if the gamer has BOUGHT their copy of the game. They're not doing it to get around copy protection, they're doing it to speed up the game, becacuse every 20 seconds it spins up the CD-Rom drive and slows down the game.

There are way too many legitimate reasons for using potentially illegal software & techniques in a perfectly legal manner.