My lite-on cdrw was working fine, but, like an idiot, I installed latest firmware from Lite-on site. Now my system sees drive as ordinary cdrom, NOT cdrw. I've sent in report to Lite-on & am awaiting reply. I tried to reinstall older firmware, but am greeted with a 'you've got the latest & greatest version' message and can't go back to earlier version. Anyone have this happen before? Anyone know of a solution? Do I need to trash the drive and buy another? Another brand? Any suggestions will be helpful. I'm running W2K SP3. The drive model is a LTR-40125S. When am I gonna learn 'If it ain't broke, LEAVE IT ALONE!!'? :x

Epox 4G4A+ MB w/Intel 845G chip
P4 2Ghz
1 gig DDR
Lite-on DVD-Rom LTD163
Lite-on LTR-40125S
2 WD 80 gig Hard drives
MSI G4 Ti4600 128 meg

How to recover from a bad flash on a LiteOn CD Writer using MTKFlash & Litefirm

It explains step by step how your once dead CD drive can come alive again, with these two little DOS programs: MTKFlash & Litefirm

http://www.justcdr.cc/

Your answer may also be found here

http://support.microsoft.com/default.asp...US;Q316529

Thanks Glow Worm, but that was for XP. I checked the registry anyway, but XP & W2K registries are slightly different. I have not been able to find The registry key in W2K yet. To Guest: I have done everything except connect the CDRW as primary master & rebooted. I'm finishing up a few things before I do that. I'll keep y'all posted. Thanks for tha thelpful replies...

First I would suggest to remove the drive from your control panel (uninstall device) and see if windows corrects the issuse when you reboot and it reinstalls the drive. If that does not correct the problem try the same thing with your IDE controller in the control panel (uninstall device). I have had simular problems with drives being misrepresented and this has always fixed it for me.

Sorry Major Slaughter. It was a no-go. I had uninstalled the the drive before & rebooted, but no luck. I then followed your suggestion about the ide controller, but, again no luck. the only difference was having to reinstall the windows drivers for the dvd and cdrw. the sysyem still sees the burner as a plain cdrom.

Sorry guys. no luck with any of the suggestions. looks like i f***ed up by 'updating' the firmware. live & learn... looks like it's time to fork out for another burner. Thanks for your help though. :x :x

http://www.tksystems.co.uk/justcdr/guide.../index.htm
if you use the MTKFlash program from there, it will let you flash anything to your CDRW, this will let you go back to an older (working) firmware.

Hey guys, thanks again for all of the advise. I have spent the last 3-4 hours searching for ways to boot into dos in order to execute the reflash program. I even received a reflash program from Lite-on. Unfortunately, I have W2K SP3 with NTFS partions. From my trial and error attemps and checking out http://www.compterhope.com/boot.htm and http://www.bootdisk.com I found out I can't boot into dos with NTFS! I tried safe mode w/command prompt, but the reflash aborted. Go figure... One thing that may work is mount the drive on a W98 machine, reflash and reinstall back into my system. My brother can help there. I've learned a lot during this session, but it would have been less stressful just to buy another burner in a couple of weeks. oh well...
Newer isn't always better. If it works, LEAVE IT ALONE!!!

P.S. to above post. I made a W98 boot diskette and booted into dos. I tried the file sent to me by Lite-on, but the file was too large for the memory to handle. I forgot that W98 can only use so much memory, no matter what you have on your MB. I also tried the MTKFLASH prog. It ran and seemed to work. It told me to reboot, I did, but no luck. I'm thinking I have a CDRW that can be used as a cdrom & will be buying another burner for sure. Later...

The memory restriction is probably the old limit of 640K of memory in DOS. You need to make sure that himem.sys is on your boot disk in order to use extended memory.

HIMEM.SYS is on my W98 boot diskette. MAybe the problem is that the executable file Lite-on sent me is 576 kb?

what about dos4gw.exe ?
dos protected mode interface....

hey guys. I gave up and bought Nero 5.5 & another burner (Sony). Installed everything and everything worked. All is well with the world. Now, wih all of my travels across the web, manufacturers sites and forums, all of this during & after my quest for an answer, I found out an amazing fact. W2K does not natively support or recognize CDRWs! Yeah! Blew my mind! W2K needs an aftermarket software package. So with that in mind (and Nero installed), I reinstalled my Liteon burner and lo & behold, it works. Now I have 2 working burners, am out some $$ and am a bit wiser. Live and learn. Thanks again for all of your help and advise. Onward & Upwards! Ya gotta love M$ :x Later....

why dont you send your CDRW to the manufacturer ?