Windows 10 Missing format option on right click for CD-RW

schmieg

Extraordinary Member
I am running a Dell XPS 8930, I7 4ghz that has a HL-DT-ST-BD-RE BU40N optical drive. The drive reads CD's, DVD's and BD's with no problem. I rarely write to these media, but I recently had to do that to transfer data to a different computer and I noticed that the format option is missing in the drop down menu when I attempt to format a CD-RW disk. Attempting to format from the Disk Manager in Computer Management was not an option as it was also missing. I was able to work around this using the command prompt as an administrator and use the format command, but that begs the question of what happened to the command in the drop down menu and how do I restore it. I would rather not do a fresh install due to the several days that I would have to spend rebuilding the system. Any ideas?
 
First thing is to uninstall the driver and let it reinstall in device manager. Next would to be if that does not work look at the version and see if there is a newer version.
 
First thing is to uninstall the driver and let it reinstall in device manager. Next would to be if that does not work look at the version and see if there is a newer version.
Been there, done that. I noticed that the Erase command is also missing. I have been unable to find any other drivers or updates - the drive is supposed to work with the Microsoft DVD-CDROM driver. I have found that my wife's 8 year old laptop uses the same driver for its DVD-R drive and that machine shows the Format and Erase commands on the dropdown menu. I'm wondering if there is Registry issue here. The drive will write to CD-RW from software or the command prompt, but not from Windows directly. This is Windows 10 Pro 2004 for reference. Thanks for the thoughts though.
 
Back
Top