Last couple of days I've gotten a message like "Hard drive has experienced a failure. It may be a bad disc" when trying to burn mixes. But it does this with every blank disc I've tried.

The CDRW installation disc won't load, either. Installed it about two years ago and the disc has been in a drawer since. Now it won't load up. Computer just tells me there's no disc in the drive. Still plays regular cds, but won't burn anything.

Do I need to replace the drive? Is it defaulting to the microsoft factory drive settings and getting confused? Because the Cd player the computer came with is toast and has been for two years.

Bad drive, sounds like. Good news is, they're cheap and easy to install. Crack 'er open. I recommend Lite-On drives for the price. Good support too.

Okay.

I want to replace the whole system since it's more than six years old, but the monthly bills are such that I never get around to doing it.

Yep, good drives, I got a Lite-On 1673s from Newegg for $56 last summer. Big complaint, however: it doesn't like DualDiscs AT ALL. It chokes on 'em, in fact, and the first time I used one I had to download the firmware and flash the drive to get it working again. I'm still using a 5-year old DVD reader for reading DualDiscs - I can't believe this drive is still working. Slow, but it does the job . . .

Does anyone have any idea what DVD burners will happily read the audio side of DualDiscs? Even the CDFreaks can't seem to answer this question, which just astounds me.

you know whats weird
couple years ago i downloaded n.e.r.d's album fly or die, loved it a ton but every time i've tried to burn it it shuts down my burning program. pisses me off