Asus Z53s laptop running windows Vista Business.
Fitted with Matsh*ta DVD multi drive UJ-850S ATA

(Name hidden otherwise GZ blocks the post)

For some reason suddenly thinks any CDR media with data on it is blank. Reads and writes DVD's and reads production CD's, just not CD-R or +R disks.

Before you ask yes I have tried several disks and yes they have data on them - confirmed by my ancient HP lappy that reads them just fine.

Nero just crashes when writing data to any CD-R media (fine on DVD-R)

Can't find the drivers for this model (at least nothing that looks legit).

Tried uninstalling and reinstalling but system would not locate the hardware automatically, and it was not in the manual list.??Had to do a restore to get working again.

Google comes up with nothing similar to my fault, although the brand seems to have its 'issues'

Any ideas, or am I looking at a hardware fault?

Any help appreciated