I would simply replace the CD burner sudden like. See the paragraph below, I had originally suggested you upgrade to a DVD burner, but.......... If you need help on howto there are plenty of folks here who can and will guide you through the simple process. Well, before posting this I checked Best Buy, Staples and Officemax, right now they all seem expensive. I bought a Sony here in Canada for $50 a while back so I figured south of the border you might do better. So much for thinking. Try the flyers on Sunday, they may have them on sale next week.

yes when it says RW it will write to it also but yes it will play them too. So the write part is the same as burn. I did get an external drive that does cd read and write and dvd read and write it has come in quite handy since I can use it on all of my computers and my new netbook which does not come with any type of cd/dvd drive, I got mine on a clearance rack at staples for very cheap. It was an older model but that did not really matter much to me for my needs and works great. Having the usb plug in makes it very simple to use. I just googled and found some external ones for under $40 with free shipping so not too bad.

Of course I will outline the steps for you. I assume your 'alongside' means you are comfortable removing the offending drive from the computer. You seem to have done enough with computers that this will be a piece of cake for you. Keep a bare arm resting on the computer case to ground yourself as you work inside. If you do get frustrated simply walk away for a few minutes. When you remove the drive also bring the 80 wire ribbon cable with you (leave it connected to the drive as you remove it) Shut down the good computer and remove the power cable from the rear of the case. Remove left side panel Look for the existing 80 wire cable connecting the HDD to the mobo. Very close will be a second connector probably marked IDE2. Connect you ribbon cable here. I will give you a warning but these days it is hard to do this wrong. Be SURE the cable is connected with the coloured edge at pin #1 Now find a four pin power supply to hook into the faulty hard drive. Make sure the HDD is sat flat or standing on end so it cannot fall as you move about. Having decided the hard drive is connected to both the power and the IDE connector we are ready to move forward. Reconnect the power cord to the rear of the computer. Start the computer. Whatch and listen to assure everything is normal. Now we have the computer running smoothly. Right click on Start Click Explore Look down the left side. You will see your C:\ drive D:\ will probably show as your DVD player E:\ should be your old drive needing a format. Click on E:\ to be sure this is the one you wish to format. You will see the contents listed on the right side of the screen. If everything is as it should be then right click on E:\ (still on the left side of the screen) In the pop up menu you will see the option to Format... (Those 3 dots after the 'Format' always indicate another step before the action is started) Click Format... Now we have a new window which shows the capacity of the drive. The option to format in NTFS, allocation in byte size and a Volume label. I like to give my hard drives a name so I am not confused somewhere down the road. Mine is Derek-slick and my wife's is Pat-acer, I forget the others. Once you have made your selections (Please do not do the quick format, you are trying to eliminate problems so do the full format) click Start, then sit back and enjoy a coffee or whatever while it does it's magic. On completion shut down, remove the newly formatted drive and close the good computer. Now you should be able to put the clean drive in and hopefully install the operating system.

Sounds like maybe the darker color thing mentioned above may also play into it. My 2001 Grand Cherokee ( factory am/fm/cd/casette player) will not recognize burned CDs. i am currently using my laptop with XP and have tried windows player, I-tunes and BurnerXP but haven't noticed any different results from any of that different software. After going thru about 30 cds burning at different speeds and formats, I finally got it to occasionally recognize one I burnt at around 4X using PCM .wav (uncompressed) format but to recognize and play I usually have to fast forward it thru a couple of songs while it is doing the initial read. Once it recognizes and starts playing then will usually play the whole CD but doesn't always work for whatever reason. I may try the label thing or try to find some of the "dark" cds to see if that matters. We have a 98 KIA witn an aftermarket cd player and it will play just about anything burnt to cd no matter format or speed.