hey, i have a philips 800 series burner that i bought a while back and it had always worked fine until now. It first started making strange noises everytime i would boot my computer, so i disconnected the power. when i reconnected it the burner does not read any cd's. it says that the cd is not the right format or might be corrupted. i really hope the burner is still good. any suggestions??? i am completely puzzled.

Specs: 500 mhz, running windows xp pro.

my yamaha burner totally stopped working also.I was told to go to the manufacters web site and download any firmware updates.I didnt fix my problem but might help you.

The same exact thing happened to me. From what I recall, the burner started to spin up real loudly, at random, seizing up the CPU for short periods of time. I disconnected it, as did you, and when I reonnected it no longer seems to function. Once a disc is inserted the driver overspins for a 20+ seconds to no avail; when trying to access the drive from explorer it claims "Disk is not formatted" "Windows cannot read from this disk. The disk might be corrupted, or it could be using a format that is not compatible with Windows."

Suckage.

Coincidentally enough, I also happen to live in Miami, have a 500 MHz processor (an AMD Athlon K7 in my case), and run WinXP Pro. My mobo is an FIC SD-11. My burner is identified by windows as a PHILIPS PCRW804.

I don't frequent these forums but felt compelled to respond to someone with an identical problem to mine. Hope you found a fix so that you might share it! I don't even remember when I got the burner... Trying to find out if it's warrantied.

In my company, where I handle hardware tech support, I've had trouble with both the older Yamaha and Phillips drives.. they work well, for quite awhile (2-3 years) and then just give up... uploading firmware never fixed them.

My solution: buy a new one.... www.egghead.com usually has good prices.

Thanx for the reply.Any suggestions for a dvd burner?