I have an HP Pavilion zt3010AP notebook computer. Recently, I replaced its original DVD/CD writer with a Sony DW-P50A DVD writer which I got on eBay. The replacement required only one screw to be removed from the notebook and a support bracket swapped over internally.

All went well and I was quite happy with the results apart from not being able to multi-zone it to region 0, as I could find nothing on the web on how to change it. However, I did manage to change it from zone 2 to zone 4 for Australia (I bought it from the USA).

For a long time, I had been using Nero 7 Premium for all my DVD compilations but one day it prompted me to upgrade it to a later version. This sounded good so I followed the prompts and downloaded the series of files required to upgrade all the Ahead Nero programs I had in the package.

Everything was going well and eventually it invited me to uninstall my current version before installing the upgrade. This seemed OK so I agreed and the uninstaller went about its business. Eventually, a message came up saying "Please wait while Windows configures Nero 7 Premium
. . . and gathering required information" but then it started to go slower and slower until it eventually stopped.

At first, I didn’t actually realise it had stopped as the mouse "hour-glassed" when it was in this window and the Task Manager told me the program was running properly. However, after a lengthy wait, it became obvious that this program was going nowhere so I rebooted the machine only to find that not only had I lost Nero 7 but I had also lost full access to the DVD drive due to an unspecified problem.