sony vaio pcg-grt816s
 

my notebook has locked all cdr burning to either 4 or 8x burning in all apps i.e. clonecd, alcahol, diskjuggler, nero, etc. I've tried different media with same problem everytime.

The max Cdr burning it's capable is 16x. Dvd-r, etc is fine.

Any ideas?

Try a new firmware from here

i did think of doing that, yet i was sure that used to burn @16x for cdr's. I will give it a go and flash the drive to see if that helps.