I have an old HP 9210e cd burner, & when i insert a 700 MB Cd-RW it doesnt seem to recognise it, also when i use directcd to format it, it stops half way with no message. I think it may only be capable of writing up to 650 but is there any patches or software that will enable me to use 700MB CD-RW on this writer?

I'd spring for a lite-on and ditch it. It isn't worth the trouble of even finding out what is wrong. Especially since 48X's sell for about 42 US dollars and a samsung is even less (and they're not half bad...I've had a 24X now for quite a while and it does well.