DVD +R DL PN417A DVD8631 makes coasters

[steve drake]

I have pn417a DVD+R DL drive in ml370-g4 for creating bootable DL backups. Running SLES9 SP1 and Microlite Backup Edge 2.01.02 for 2.6 kernels. Backups to DL media (verbatim and memorex) are successful but resulting media is a coaster. Won't boot - won't mount, nothing. This works fine with same DL media on Sony DRU-700A and NEC NS-6500 drives in the same server. Only the HP drive won't work. However, K3b (this month's version) will burn a 5+gb iso to DL media using this PN417a drive. Go figure. The drive is seen as Philips DVD8631 firmware BB03. SP26436.exe claims to upgrade the fw of this drive to CH16 in an XP machine - however, it doesn't work. I put the drive in a ML110 running XP but sp26436 refused to upgrade the fw. Any ideas other than scrapping the drive and picking another?