DVD burner not recognizing DVDs

I've had a mini for quite some time now, and recently in the past few weeks I've had a strange problem where it no longer recognizes burnable/burned DVDs. CDs work fine, retail DVDs on movies work fine, but I am unable to access any of the things I've burned myself.

I've tried 3 of the types of burnable DVDs, and have even dug up some of my old DVDs I burned myself on this computer and they all do not mount. I've checked the system info, and the drive is still being detected as a DVD burner, so I am at a complete loss as to what could be causing this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Mini, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Dec 1, 2006 8:22 PM

18 replies

Dec 18, 2006 4:45 AM in response to Michael D. Goldberg

What does Hardware Test tell about the optical drive ?

Dec 23, 2006 1:40 PM in response to Sebastian Soyka

I'm having a similar problem with my Intel Mini. It seemed to start when I was trying to figure out why I had a 25 MB console.log file. I tried to boot from my install disc and it wouldn't do it. Turns out it wasn't recognizing my drive anymore.
I end up having to lift the disc with a credit card and hold down the left mouse button to get it to eject.
...then suddenly it's fine. And I burn things and watch DVDs, etc. ...until it craps out again.
When I put in a disc, I can hear it trying to read it but when it doesn't work, even System Profiler doesn't see that it's there. And when I open DVD Player, I get "There was an initialization error A valid DVD drive could not be found. [-70012].

Other notes: OSX 10.4.8, Intel Core Duo, Matsushita internal CD/DVD burner...

What about resetting the PMU? Worth a shot? Does it erase anything on my machine?

Hopefully someone can help me. I've seen a few similar topics/issues in the forums here...

Dec 25, 2006 8:07 PM in response to Garwood

Sorry to hear about your problem but glad to know i'm not the only one! i am having the exact same problem that you described with my Mac Mini (G4, 1.25GHz, OS X 10.4.8, Matshita DVD-R UJ-835F). the problem seems to have emerged over time to the current situation where it only plays commercial DVDs and does not burn or play anything on a DVD-R. CDs burn and play just fine. Sometimes after re-inserting a DVD-R many, many times it will catch and start burning but lately it just spits them back out every time. my older, 1GHZ PowerBook with a UJ-815 drive burns and plays the same discs just fine. If anyone finds a solution let me know! good luck to all
with peace,
A.H. Sellars

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DVD burner not recognizing DVDs