check this for a weird one, i was trying to dump MS, so downloaded Mandriva, this is when my DVD-RW decided to die, or so i thought, every disc inserted a disc, it showed as blank (no matter what was on there) nero, ashampoo, CDBurnerXP and XP all reported the disc as blank although it would go through the motions of blanking a disc then i burnt Mandriva (a few times) but on blank and burn, the LED never turned red, as usual so i figured sod it the drives dead so i threw a firmware upgrade at it, and still the same problems, so i figured i've got a dead RW drive so i removed it from my pc, to aid installation of a new one the day after that, i was thinking so i reattatched the drive and got the Mandriva disc, set to boot from CD, and it booted mandriva install but refused to continue, so i put Mandriva disc in other drive, chose other drive to install from and everythings tickerty boo the drive still reconises only blank discs, but if i remember whats on the disc everythings fine (and the LED on the drive has resumed turning red) but i don't care, i'm on Mandriva, and thats whats important!
