Can't format a CD-RW with InCD

[Pilgrim]

I'm repairing a client's Win98SE machine that has an old Ricoh RW7060a drive w/1.80 firmware. Inserting a blank CD-RW into the drive doesn't display the InCD dialog. Choosing InCD format from the drive's context menu opens the InCD dialog box but clicking on Format locks up the system and a hard reboot is the only way out.

Also, files on a formatted CD-RW cannot be deleted, renamed nor can he drag & drop files onto it. However, they can be read and copied to another location with EasyWrite Reader installed.

System Info:
Win 98SE
CD-RW Ricoh RW7060a (firmware 1.80)
Nero 6.006
InCD 4.3.11.1
WINASPI32.dll - April 11, 2005
APIX.vdx - April 11, 2005
WINASPI.dll - May 10, 1999

I can't help but wonder if this drive is too old for Nero to recognize?
ASPIENUM.vdx - May 10, 1999

[Han]

What about "too fast CD-RW disc"? Older drives can only write on 4x speed CD-RW media or slower...

[Pilgrim]

Han,

Yeh, that crosssed my mind too. I was using a HS disc at first and then switched to a 4x CD-RW but no change. The guy had Roxio EZCD Creator and DirectCD installed on the machine before so I figured there was a conflict going on. I tried using the Add or Remove Programs to uninstall DirectCD but it failed because it said it couldn't access an external file, etc. Those two programs had evidently had some of their files removed manually and he doesn't have the original CD's to re-install it. So, I found the "Roxiozap" utility, ran that and then went through the system and Registry to remove all instances that I could find for both Roxio and DirectCD. But that didn't resolve it.

So, what now? Again, I can read both CD-R and CD-RW media. And I can write to CD-R using Nero. But I cannot do anything else with CD-RW media, e.g., write, change, move, copy to files or format discs.

Jeff

[Han]

Huh... If I were you I would test the drive's CD-RW recording capabilities in another PC. It's possible that CD-RW part of the drive went bad...

[Pilgrim]

Han,

Thanks for the reply. Since posting my original question, I have reformatted the man's HDD and reinstalled everything. As of yet, I haven't tried to do anything with the burner to see if it still has the same problem. When I do and the problem still exists, I'll see about putting the drive in another PC and giving it a try.

Thanks,

Jeff