Recordable disks all appear blank to M1330

Has anyone seen a problem with the combi drive thinking all recordable media are blank disks?
I have the Ma-tsu-shi-ta drive and discovered today it is only recognizing the content of stamped disks and not recordable ones. Recordable CDs and DVDs have the same problem - Vista prompts me as to what to do with the "blank" disk. The mechanism sounds like it is spinning the disks up normally.
Not sure when the problem started but recently I installed AVG 8 antivirus.

 

I would try booting from a burned CD first, to see if the problem is software or hardware related. If it's hardware, then it won't boot. If it's software, then it will boot.

Narrows down a lot.

 

I should mention that the Windows event log has some messages:

An error was detected on device \Device\CdRom0 during a paging operation.

 

Thanks - that's a very good idea!
(Though I fear I can't find a boot CD since most of my possessions were put into store in my absence about 2-weeks ago). It might have to wait.
Or perhaps I can burn myself a new SpinRite CD... though looks like the blank disks are in store too!

 

If your burner is still functioning you could download and burn a linux distro, something small such as Damn Small Linux ( http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) should suffice.

 

Thanks - I found some blank disks but also the drive mysteriously started to work again so I will defer the investigation in the hope it doesn't re-occur.