I have a Sony DVD RW AW-G170A DVD Writer. The problem I'm facing is that whenever I insert some burned DVDs, the drive shows the DVD as blank. There is no doubt that the DVD is not blank as it shows contents on my friend's computer.

Also, whenever I insert such DVDs (which show up as blank CDs), under Windows explorer, my drive gets listed as CD Drive.

I read something about API layers (not sure about the exact name) and also articles stating that not all DVDs are burned in the same way and that is the reason why my DVD drive cant recognize such discs.

This drive is able to read most DVDs without problem. I've come across many people who have this same problem and they tried updating their drivers, firmware etc. but it didnt help them. So I'm guessing it wont me either.

I'm on Win XP SP2. I'm thinking this must be a hardware related problem only. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Nisar.