DVD Burner Problem

Hi Everyone!

I am running Windows XP home edition and have a AMD Athlon 3200+ processor with an 8X Double Layer DVD +/- RW burner. _NEC DVD_RW ND-2510A
The Door to the DVD says DVD R/RW

I have been buying Memorex 8X DVD-R blank discs for a long time and have had great luck burning with them. Now I notice the stores are going to the 16X and my burner isn't made for this type. I bought a package of Sony's that are DVD-R but the only difference is that they say 1X - 16X. I had used a small package of Sony's DVD+R that said the same thing, 1X - 16X and they worked good, but I wanted the larger spool of 50 and also I had wanted the minus, so I had bought the Sony DVD-R 1X -16X. But after getting it home and opening it and trying to burn one, they will not work.
I do see on the Sony DVD+R it says RW down below and these only say R, but my burner shows R/RW so shouldn't it burn these as well?

My Memorex only show the R and they always burned, but now I can only get these in a 5 pack and it is not cost effective to buy them this way.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I know I need to probably get a new burner to take advantage of the changing technology of 16X and I see several brands out there. Is there a particular one anyone has had good luck with and any I should stay away from? One more question. I found some that are external. What are your thoughts on these? Better to go ahead and just buy an internal one or go with an external one for the ease of connecting it?

Thanks so much for your time. I do appreciate it!!!

You can use 16x discs without any problems, they will just burn at the maximum speed of the drive (8x in this case). There is never normally any problem with using a faster media in a slower drive (or vice versa). I'm not a big fan of Memorex myself though, TDK and Verbatim are what I like.

Thanks Nick for your reply!

I just tried one of the original Memorex 16X DVD's and I got the same error message while trying to burn saying it was an Illegal disc and the burn was aborted.

I then tried one of the Sony's that says it is 1X - 16X and got the same Message saying it was an Illegal disc.

I am using Nero as my burning program. I've tried this with burning both Data and Slideshows. I get the rror message and the DVD tray opens.

There is an insert in the Memorex DVDs that tells about updating firmware and gives a link to find out more about it. I read a post here on the forum about someone who had a difficult time time deleting the file once it had downloaded and I am wondering if you recommend that I download a firmare update? I'm aware that it will not make the burner go faster but just will allow me to burn onto 16X discs. I'm not sure why I can't do this now since I've been told by you and two other people that I should be able to.

Anyway, Just wanted to say Thank You and that I tried it, but still got the same results.

Have a nice evening! :)

Try cleaning the lens of the drive with a cleaning disc. You can get one from any music or electronics store if you don't have one already

Ok, I'll get one tomorrow and try that! Thanks! I since went to the firmware link for my burner and discovered the links for the upgrades for my burner are no longer available since apparently my burner is quite old. I was reading however and they mentioned that Illegal Disc was one thing a user might get when their system was needing updating so I feel I'm just needing to upgrade burners and put this little burner in another smaller computer I have here at home.

Thanks !!!