Verified answer

It's most likely because your drive is incompatible with the brand of media. Some drives seem to have trouble with cheap media. (My 2007 Macbook is really picky) The cheaper the drive, the more picky it'll be about which brand you use. Cheap media + cheap drive = probably not gonna work.

The drives tend to become more picky as they age. (Maybe a firmware update would fix?)

My $350 burner burns to any brand I throw at it, even discs none of my 6 other drives will accept. Though those drives can read the discs once the disc has been burned to.

The brand you want to avoid most is memorex. While you want to go for TDK or Verbatim. The best quality discs are typically made in Japan; one company there is taiyo-yuden. (AKA: JVC)

Besides just better compatibility, there's another reason to buy better quality discs. Higher quality discs (And also higher quality burners) produce fewer errors when burning. This gives error correction in the reading drive more leeway to correct for errors, like from scratches.

Use your "Device Manager" to highlight and then uninstall the drive(s) that you're having problems with. Once that's done, reboot the computer and Windows will then see the drives as "New Hardware" and install the driver for the drive(s). Then try your blank discs again. Good luck.

is your cd and dvd drive plus or minus?

The newer ones can read both plus or minus cds but the older drives were plus or minus specific.

If you look on the drive itself where it says dvd drive, it should show the symbol for either plus or minus and the discs you use must match this or they will not work.

Also, there is nothing on the disc so there is nothing to read. Does your cd or dvd drive recognize discs that have something on them?

Well they don't. This is unformatted empty media and therefore does not show up as there is nothing there! You need to write something to the disk first and then it will "show up".

AJ

Because they are blank.