CD & CD Burners fail?

B

BruceM

I have a question for all who have experienced a drive fail while using it
in an XP operating system computer.
I am in a small town where I get asked "to look at my computer" every time
something goes whacky.
Just lately I have been flooded with CD drives & burners that for some
reason suffer some faults.
The faults I'm getting vary. Some of the more regular ones are:--
1. Drive is recognised by bios & show correctly in "device manager", but
will not detect ANY disc in the drive. If you try to look at the disc from
windows explorer, it says "insert disc".
2. When inserting any disc, the light flashes for about 15 seconds & then
immediately ejects the disc. Can't "explore" etc, because it ejects straight
away.
3. Inserting any disc that would "auto-play" will not auto start. Shows
correctly in "my computer". Clicking on icon here just opens the disc as a
folder not start up. Clicking on the "exe" file will start the program.
4. Inserting a disc causes the drive to "hammer". Sounds like the arm in the
drive is continually "banging" from outside track to inside track. Can only
be stopped by pressing the "eject" button.

Once a drive exhibits any of these symptoms, even if it is installed in ANY
other computer, it remains with the same symptoms & can't be "fixed". I've
even tried reflashing to the same or later one available on manufacturer's
site.
Aopen have a forum & I noticed that they are also getting quite a few
similar problems.
My opinion is that it MIGHT be caused by the SP1 update from Microsoft
clashing with the drives?
I have experienced it in Liteon, Aopen, Acer & other drives.

ps. I've tried all suggestions such as changes to jumper, cable, ide0 or
ide1, other computer etc etc

Has anyone else got a similar story?
BruceM
 
N

Neil Postance

BruceM said:
I have a question for all who have experienced a drive fail while using it
in an XP operating system computer.
I am in a small town where I get asked "to look at my computer" every time
something goes whacky.
Just lately I have been flooded with CD drives & burners that for some
reason suffer some faults.
The faults I'm getting vary. Some of the more regular ones are:--
1. Drive is recognised by bios & show correctly in "device manager", but
will not detect ANY disc in the drive. If you try to look at the disc from
windows explorer, it says "insert disc".
2. When inserting any disc, the light flashes for about 15 seconds & then
immediately ejects the disc. Can't "explore" etc, because it ejects straight
away.
3. Inserting any disc that would "auto-play" will not auto start. Shows
correctly in "my computer". Clicking on icon here just opens the disc as a
folder not start up. Clicking on the "exe" file will start the program.
4. Inserting a disc causes the drive to "hammer". Sounds like the arm in the
drive is continually "banging" from outside track to inside track. Can only
be stopped by pressing the "eject" button.

Once a drive exhibits any of these symptoms, even if it is installed in ANY
other computer, it remains with the same symptoms & can't be "fixed". I've
even tried reflashing to the same or later one available on manufacturer's
site.
Aopen have a forum & I noticed that they are also getting quite a few
similar problems.
My opinion is that it MIGHT be caused by the SP1 update from Microsoft
clashing with the drives?
I have experienced it in Liteon, Aopen, Acer & other drives.

ps. I've tried all suggestions such as changes to jumper, cable, ide0 or
ide1, other computer etc etc

Has anyone else got a similar story?
BruceM


Many of our Aopen CDRW drives at work seem to suffer this problem, i also wo
uld be very very grateful of any solution provided. The computers that the
drives fail on are all XP SP1 machines, so i think this may be the key,
maybe SP2 will cure it?

Neil
 
R

R. Asby Dragon

BruceM said:
I have a question for all who have experienced a drive fail while using it
in an XP operating system computer.
I am in a small town where I get asked "to look at my computer" every time
something goes whacky.
Just lately I have been flooded with CD drives & burners that for some
reason suffer some faults.
The faults I'm getting vary. Some of the more regular ones are:--
1. Drive is recognised by bios & show correctly in "device manager", but
will not detect ANY disc in the drive. If you try to look at the disc from
windows explorer, it says "insert disc".
2. When inserting any disc, the light flashes for about 15 seconds & then
immediately ejects the disc. Can't "explore" etc, because it ejects straight
away.
3. Inserting any disc that would "auto-play" will not auto start. Shows
correctly in "my computer". Clicking on icon here just opens the disc as a
folder not start up. Clicking on the "exe" file will start the program.
4. Inserting a disc causes the drive to "hammer". Sounds like the arm in the
drive is continually "banging" from outside track to inside track. Can only
be stopped by pressing the "eject" button.

Once a drive exhibits any of these symptoms, even if it is installed in ANY
other computer, it remains with the same symptoms & can't be "fixed". I've
even tried reflashing to the same or later one available on manufacturer's
site.
Aopen have a forum & I noticed that they are also getting quite a few
similar problems.
My opinion is that it MIGHT be caused by the SP1 update from Microsoft
clashing with the drives?
I have experienced it in Liteon, Aopen, Acer & other drives.

ps. I've tried all suggestions such as changes to jumper, cable, ide0 or
ide1, other computer etc etc

Has anyone else got a similar story?
BruceM

Do you have a "clean" Win 98/98SE box available to test these 'bad'
drives?? That would be my first step . Unfortunately if the drives
are "truely damaged"; that won't prove if SP1 was the cause.

I've seen some failures on both readers and burners over the last
few years; but nothing beyond the usual "hardware does die" level.
A lot of those were just "dirty lens" /gummy sled drive problems
from dust /smoke etc. I fixed many of these with a "hardcore
clean" and relubing the sled drive drive wormshaft(s) .

I'm keying off the "small town" thing here:
Three different thoughts
1) Power issues -- any other amount of "hi fail" stuff going on?
2) Somebody passing around an "overburn" program ?
3) Local air pollution from something like a concrete plant or
heavy seacoast salt air? Desert dust? Recent heavy smoke from
forest/grass fires?

I'll admit I'm no XP expert; but I haven't seen any major rise in
CD/DVD drive problems (other than the "buggy" models that every mfr
puts out every so often<g>)
 
J

JAD

Check the ASPI layer that is installed. Some burning software is
loading a 4.71 version that in my opinion was designed to make people
buy new burners. Very unstable with many different Drives. Go to the
Adaptec site and download the layer version checker. If you have the
4.71version, google for the 4.60 version. Hope that sorts it out. It
has in many cases-not all, but well worth a shot.
 
B

BruceM

Yes I think SP1 might be the culprit but once the drive has this fault I
find it absolutely impossible to ever get it going again. If anybody ever
finds a cure I'll dig them all out & it'll be look out Ebay !!!
BruceM
 
B

BruceM

Hi Jad,
Can you be a little bit more specific about the details?
I tried two of the checkers on my XP & got N/A for all departments. Said
ASPI wasn't installed properly. I might have got the wrong checker? Do you
have the address for downloading the XP one?
If I find I have got the 4.71 one, how do I remove it & install the 4.60
version?
Hope you can help me........ regards.........
BruceM
 
P

PBS

1) are these all with nforce2 chipset?
solution go to NVIDIA.com and use the latest generic drivers

if not

2) do the systems run some type p2p software using sp1a or 2 beta
rumour only - not verified , p2p clients have been tampered with to reflash
rom on cd burners
to fail or not detect disks at all - reason being slow down distro of
pirated software

3) Microsoft are hitting back , if u use copied xp cd's - do not enable
remote registry , auto updates , remote invites and
system restore , manual updates is OK

this is all unconfirmed except for # 1
 
N

Neil Postance

PBS said:
1) are these all with nforce2 chipset?
solution go to NVIDIA.com and use the latest generic drivers

if not

2) do the systems run some type p2p software using sp1a or 2 beta
rumour only - not verified , p2p clients have been tampered with to reflash
rom on cd burners
to fail or not detect disks at all - reason being slow down distro of
pirated software

3) Microsoft are hitting back , if u use copied xp cd's - do not enable
remote registry , auto updates , remote invites and
system restore , manual updates is OK

this is all unconfirmed except for # 1

None of these apply to the place where i work. i work in a school with an XP
site licence. none of the boards are n-force, and none have any P2P
Software. although maybe my problem is that they are all RM machines, P4's
running off an RM 67watt PSU!
 
B

BruceM

Yes, same here. No p2p, doubtful if cracked XP software.
Most likely copyrighted disks have been copied in the burners though. (whose
hasn't?)
Whatever happens seems to corrupt the permanent memory in the drives,
although reflashing them still doesn't fix it.
It seems a little like a virus in the bios of a computer motherboard.
BruceM
 
J

JAD

I will hunt down the links to the checker and the 4.60 version. I
believe that the checker you have used is for both NT and 9X versions
of windows, if you got it from the Adaptec site. I'll post back when I
have them.
 
J

JAD

http://www.tburke.net/info/misc/aspi.htm


BruceM said:
Hi Jad,
Can you be a little bit more specific about the details?
I tried two of the checkers on my XP & got N/A for all departments. Said
ASPI wasn't installed properly. I might have got the wrong checker? Do you
have the address for downloading the XP one?
If I find I have got the 4.71 one, how do I remove it & install the 4.60
version?
Hope you can help me........ regards.........
BruceM
 
P

PBS

Hate to state the obvious\
but you guys using nt2000 and xp
did you check that the appropriate service is started
i.e imapi cd burn

click start , cntrl poanel , admin , services
 
N

Neil Postance

PBS said:
Hate to state the obvious\
but you guys using nt2000 and xp
did you check that the appropriate service is started
i.e imapi cd burn

click start , cntrl poanel , admin , services

It's not burning thats the problem, its that it wont detect any disc at any
time.

Neil
 
F

Forrest

I have two machines in the house, (p-3, 866mhz and p-4 2.4 gig) that I
bought a Yamaha cd/rw burner for. I'm running XP on both, service pack 1,
and both have had the exact same problems that the poster is talking about.
Both died within a year. I just replaced them. Memorex CDR on the p-3 and
NEC- DVD burner on the p-4. I'm keeping my legs crossed that they don't take
a dump also. By the way, no smoking in the house and low usage.
 
S

swankypimp

Machines I've worked on have had the same problem not reading disks,
and it was an ASPI layer problem. There is a conflict with XP and
older versions of InCD, which comes bundled with Nero; XP uses the
wrong driver for optical drives so they show up in My Computer but are
not readable. Since the InCD program gets loaded just following the
boot, go to Safe Mode and see if the drives work.
 
B

BruceM

swankypimp said:
Machines I've worked on have had the same problem not reading disks,
and it was an ASPI layer problem. There is a conflict with XP and
older versions of InCD, which comes bundled with Nero; XP uses the
wrong driver for optical drives so they show up in My Computer but are
not readable. Since the InCD program gets loaded just following the
boot, go to Safe Mode and see if the drives work.


OK, I'll try it but like I said, once they get this problem they never seem
to work again. I've tried them in 98 in other computers etc but it's almost
like a virus in the actual drive in the flash rom or something. I've tried
reflashing the drive but still doesn't fix it either.
I just chuck them out now.
I've got two burners & three cd drives sitting here. Pity the problen can't
be properly diagnosed.
I personally reckon the laser gets killed.
BruceM
 

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