DVD-RAM drive not working with Windows Vista

[Guest]

Problem:
I recently upgraded from Win XP Pro to Vista Ultimate. My LG GSA-H42N
DVD-RAM worked fine in Win XP Pro but upon upgrading to Vista Ultimate it
wouldn't work anymore. If I boot up with any optical media in the drive then
it will hang for about 1 - 2 minutes just before the Windows circle screen
while the drive blinks. Trying to read from the drive in explorer just
causes the drive to blink and sometimes will cause Explorer to lock up. If
it does not lock up, after a few minutes the drive shown in My Computer does
not update at all to show the name of the disc. Trying to open the drive
through My Computer causes explorer to lock up just about every time. If I
do not take the drive out after trying to read from it, it slows the entire
system to a crawl as the drive keeps blinking away.

When inserting an audio CD it recognizes that it is an audio CD but then can
do nothing with it when I try to play it. Same goes for blank CD-RWs. It
got as far as trying to format it and then failed.

Booting to the Vista DVD works slowly but when I then try to do an Install
it complains after a while about needing me to insert a CD/DVD driver.
CD/DVD drivers don't exist for LGs outside of those provided by Microsoft in
their OS.

Attempted Solutions:
I've completely formatted, reinstalled Win XP Pro and then the Vista
Ultimate upgrade DVD - no effect.
I've deleted upper and lower filters - no effect.
I've upgraded the firmware from RL00 to RL01 - no effect.
I've upgraded my bios to the latest one - no effect.
I've disabled my RAID and attempted to install from the Vista DVD - no effect.
I've swapped in a different DVD drive - no effect.
I've tried changing between MASTER and CABLE SELECT - no effect.
I've disabled the Windows Search Service - no effect.
I've tried booting into safe mode to read from the drives - no effect.
I've tried accessing the drives from the command prompt - no effect.

My System:
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz Socket AM2
Corsair XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 SDRAM 675 (PC2 5400)
LG 18X DVD±R Super-Multi DVD Burner With 12X DVD-RAM Write Black IDE Model
GSA-H42N-BK
ATI Radeon X1950
Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
2x SATA Western Digital 75GB Hard Drives in RAID 0

 

[Guest]

Follow Up:
I tried disabling my DVD-RAM and 3 1/4" drive and then re-enabled the
DVD-RAM. I tried to access the Vista Ultimate disc and the system just sat
there for a while and I went off to do something else. When I came back it
had a message asking me to insert a CD or DVD even though there was already
one in there. I canceled out of the message and then a few minutes later the
DVD drive decided to eject the disc.

 

[Guest]

I would clear the upper and lower filters for the DVD-RAM Drive.
Full Steps and Details can be found on the KB 929461 Appropriately named:
"Optical drives do not work as expected after you upgrade a computer to
Windows Vista"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929461/en-us

 

[Guest]

I've already tried clearing out the filters. The problem lies even before
the filters get applied because it won't even recognize the DVD-RAM drive
when doing a clean install by booting to the DVD.

I thought that it might have something to do with the BIOS since I've got my
hard drives on SATA and the DVD-RAM on the primary IDE but none of the
settings that I tried seemed to have any effect. Right now they are all on
Auto Detect.

I heard a recommendation that I turn off PnP OS in my Bios but that doesn't
have any effect either.

 

[Brian Bradley]

Off topic, perhaps, but:

My 6-month-old Compaq laptop came with an LG brand DVD-RAM optical drive,
but the "RAM" function, as far as I could tell, did not work under XP SP2,
as configured from the retailer. I purchased a DVD-RAM disc, but under XP
SP2, it didn't seem to "do anything." Neither the pre-installed
Roxio-version-something-suite nor XP SP2 seemed to want to do the "RAM"
thing, and I did not bother to install any other third-party programs or
drivers for the DVD-RAM drive. The DVD-RAM drive worked perfectly with all
other media such as CD-R/W and all the DVD-R/W +/- formats, which I'm still
not clear on but don't care, since they all seemed to work well.

When my HP Vista Express Upgrade arrived, I did a clean install of Vista
Home Basic, and the DVD-RAM worked perfectly wtih the DVD-RAM disc I had
purchased earlier, natively, without any third-party drivers or burning
software. I was impressed with that little part of Vista.*

I had only barely heard of DVD-RAM, so I looked around the Internet but
couldn't find much about the topic in general, and certainly didn't find any
glowing recommendations for using the DVD-RAM technology in general or the
benefits of using it for a specific purpose.

My question: Who's using DVD-RAM drives and media, and what for, and what
are the benefits? It seems to provide merely another way to drag-and-drop
files to a DVD media. Please enlighten me in case I'm missing something.

Heh, heh, when I bought the computer, I thought, "Oooh, DVD-*RAM* . . .
sexy," (remember, not knowing exactly what it was for, although I knew what
RAM stood for), and I assumed it would be useful and better than dragging
and dropping (packet writing?), which I don't find all that useful, either,
but I can see how some users would.

Thanks!

Brian

*Actually, I'm thoroughly impressed with Vista, and love using it. Home
Basic runs flawlessly on my new laptop, and Business runs flawlessly on my
four-year-old HP desktop PC, which I use for my 8-hour-a-day home-based and
Internet-based transcription service. (I upgraded both PCs to 2 GB of RAM.)