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My Toshiba CDROM Burner Stopped Working - What I Did To Fix It

I am one of those people that got bit by the Sony Rootkit virus. Needless to say, I will never, ever buy anything Sony again. Period.

Around the same time I got hit with the Sony rootkit (serves me right I guess for venturing into Windows), my wife installed the latest iTunes. I also did a big batch of service pack updates from Microsoft. I was unaware that I had the Sony rootkit virus installed (my fault for playing fast and loose on Windows), and all of these installations took place on the same day.

After doing the above on the same day, something strange happened. I could no longer burn CD's. I also couldn't burn DVD's on my external TDK DVD burner either. Assuming it was just a Windows bug, viri, etc, I booted into Linux - but had the same exact problem on both burners.

This struck me as very strange. I wondered if I picked up a viri that embedded itself into my MBR, or perhaps some new super strange BIOS viri. But here's the really strange part...

When I moved my external TDK burner to another machine - it too wouldn't burn even on that second machine. VERY strange.

The solution: I downloaded a new TDK firmware update for the external TDK burner. After burning in the new firmware - it works and burns again.

The internal burner (a Toshiba SD-R2212) on my Toshiba laptop was a different story. Re-burning the factory firmware didn't help. Re-burning the last BIOS revision from Toshiba also didn't help as the problem remained. ultimately, I stumbled on a firmware site that has an assortment of hacked firmware for just about every drive on the planet.

I took a chance and burned one of the hacks. Now, my internal Toshiba burner works again.

If you are having a problem like mine, especially after doing a round of patches from Microsoft (I used Autopatcher XP)... check out this site:

http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_firmware.php?category=15&manufactor=31

If you have an SD-R2212 like I did, the patch that worked for me was this one:

http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_file.php?site=firmware1&file=R2212_X006B.zip

posted by majqa @ 12:38 PM