unable to burn cd's for data back-up

[jayedes]

I run a G4 w/ Panther MAC OS X 10.3.9-500 MHZ/60 GIG HD.A local tech made a back-up of my Tiger system onto his Mac before he installed Panther. Once he downloaded my back-up, I took the computer home wothout trying all my former applications.

Somehow I have lost the ability to burn cd-roms for data back-up. He downloaded a unregistered Toast Titanium 7 for me to try. I get error messages when i try to try to install..., saying it cant be used in classic. if i quit classic, it opens anyhow and i get the same message.

when i put a blank cd in the drive, nothing shows up on the desktop and after a few seconds the drive opens and turns itself off.

I tried some shareware (BurnX) but it seems that my cd-drive is not being recognized.

everything used to work perfectly, all the time, flawlessly.now the tech will not return my phone calls.
Help I'm a graphic designer & need to provide my clients with their files on CD/rom!!

thanks...JH

[zek]

Will the drive mount existing data disks, or any kind of disks? Is it just blank disks that have this problem? I'd suggest getting rid of toast, especially since it's unregistered and thus probably crippled in some way. You don't need any third-party software to burn data disks, Disk Utility should be fine.

Is this a built-in drive that came with the mac? Anyway, it could be that toast is cutting in when you insert a blank disk, stopping the system from launching Disk Utility (or asking you what to do, depending on your settings). Have a look in System Preferences, under CDs and DVDs, what is it set to do when you insert a blank DVD?