DVD Drive Problem

[niko]

On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 07:20:58 +0000, niko wrote:
-
Hi all, new to the forum

Anyway, I've got an unsual problem that I just can not work out.
I've
got two DVD burners, one is a Pioneer DVR-109 and the other is a
Lite-On DVDRW SOHW-832S. Now, my pioneer burner is practically brand
spanking new, I haven't even burnt a DVD with it yet! It worked fine
at
the start, and now it's just stopped reading CDs and DVDs all
together,
I've updated firmware, no difference. I think I've just bought a
dodgy
DVD drive, but thats not really my concern. My other burner, which
is
also very new worked fine for ages, then started to stop working.
Would only read CDs and DVDs very slowly, but for some reason it
wouldn't read any type of Movie files, only data such as documents
and
images. Now, it's totally died. CD/DVD loads up in Windows, asks
what
action I wanna take (eg. music cd) I then load it up into winamp, all
the tracks load up, but nothing will play, it will just freeze
winamp.
It's definitely not a winamp problem as the same thing happens if I
load
up into Media Player. Also updated firmware, with no luck. After a
format, the Lite-On burner works fine for a few days... so I'm not
sure
If possibly I've got a virus or some corrupt software I installed
keeps
interferring with it. Really have no idea... any suggestions!?!?!
:S

Thanks.-

Impossible to say for sure without working with the hardware firsthand
but
every time I've had drives that work on and off, they were on their way
out
and ultimately needed replacing. DVD drives work with two lasers. It's
possible for the DVD laser to be out of alignment yet still be able to
read
CDs. Your drives are both relatively new. Is there anything about the
environment (heavy exposure to dust?) that might be knocking them out
so
quickly?

Thanks for the advice so far. No heavy exposure to dust, and my case
isn't getting knocked around at all, sitting on my desk. Only times
I've moved it is to take out optical drives to change jumper settings
and check IDE cables are in correctly. Here's a list of main programs
I've got installed and use (running xp pro).

XP Office;
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
CDex_150
DSS DJ
Internet Download Manager
JASC; Paint Shop Pro
Flash 5
mIRC
Winamp
MSN Messenger 7.0
Ableton Live 4
Nero 6316
CyberLink PowerDVD
DigitalWatch 0.701
TwinhanDTV 2.602

That's basically what I've had installed so far... can't do much
without optical drives I've realised

 

[Sharon F]

Thanks for the advice so far. No heavy exposure to dust, and my case
isn't getting knocked around at all, sitting on my desk. Only times
I've moved it is to take out optical drives to change jumper settings
and check IDE cables are in correctly. Here's a list of main programs
I've got installed and use (running xp pro).

XP Office;
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
CDex_150
DSS DJ
Internet Download Manager
JASC; Paint Shop Pro
Flash 5
mIRC
Winamp
MSN Messenger 7.0
Ableton Live 4
Nero 6316
CyberLink PowerDVD
DigitalWatch 0.701
TwinhanDTV 2.602

That's basically what I've had installed so far... can't do much
without optical drives I've realised

Okay, little or no dust so you don't have a problem from that. What about
controller cables? Have you tried new ones? Tried to run with just one
drive on the controller instead of two?

Other suggestions:
If possible, try the drives on another computer to see how they perform. If
not working right, then it's pretty much conclusive the drives are dodgy.

You don't mention having a problem with the drives showing up in Explorer
but if you've tried various burning software, the upper and lower filters
for the drive may be messed up. You can download cdgone.zip from this page:
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpcd.htm
Using the contents of the zip file resets the filters to XP's defaults.
After using, you may need to reinstall your main disk burning app so that
it can write its filters to the registry.

This might sound odd but try turning AutoPlay off. When working with burned
disks vs commercial pressed disks, the burning software usually wants
control. Autoplay can interfere with the initial disk check and initial
read. I use TweakUI to turn autoplay off. Note that most disks with autorun
will not work when you use this setting. You'll need to run the setup.exe
on the disk manually or temporarily reverse the autorun setting. TweakUI
makes it easy to toggle this setting on and off as needed.

TweakUI for XP is one of the power toys that can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx