I have the same problem. After
spending 5 hours with Sony tech support all the way up to their
engineers, I found that once you upgrade the firmware to 1.40 + your
drive will burn 1X & 2X DVD at
1X only. 4X DVD will burn at 2X. The upgrade cut back the speed so the
drive won't burn out if you use 4X media.The Sony site had a warning
that you must upgrade the firmware or you will damage your drive using
4X media. It also states the this upgrade will improve your drives
performance! Sony say that they are working on changing their webpage
to give the correct info. I just purchased 50 Pioneer certified ProDisk
2X blanks. Nero will only let them burn at 1X. Now that I've upgraded
my drive is only half the speed it used to be. Sony told me that their
is no way change the firmware back! The bottom line here is not to
upgrade the firmware and don't use 4X media.
Did you actually try running an older firmware back in? Or if your
drive is supported by Joerg's loader, did you try that? A 2x drive
which doesn't burn 2x media is broken, you should look to RMA it or get
a refund if they don't make it work correctly.