Vista - TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-L632D ATA Device

Please help! I've have a Toshiba laptop and have been formatting and burning CDs. My system locked up as I was ejecting a CD. I rebooted my system and the files on the CD were lost. The message asked if I wanted to format the CD. I took the CD out and put in a brand new one. I tried to format it but got the message "Windows is unable to format the CD". I tried several CDs and nothing works. It will open other CDs and display the files that are on it fine. It just won't format new CDs. Again, please help! Thanks,

Try these ones fixes:
1) Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or is not recognized by Windows or other programs
2) Your CD or DVD drive cannot read or write media

It sounds like you are using erasable discs. You could download Imgburn and try to format with that. But, I don't recommend keeping anything important on erasables. I learned the hard way. They are good for doing test burns or "play once then erase" type of usage. It's better to find out what CD/DVD blanks work in your system then get them in bulk from an online store like SuperMediaStore or MeritLine.

When you load in Imgburn enable the option on the Write settings tab "lock drive exclusive access". If it tells you another app has control of the drive, disable all other burning apps until only Imgburn has control of it. If things don't work normally then, it may be hardware related and you would check for DMA enabled, drivers etc..

Sounds like the registry might have gotten hosed. Do you have a restore point from before the stuff hit the fan? If so, you might try that.