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[Spike Spiegel]

Never before have I been so closely tempted to inflict violent and malicious harm upon my computer...

Since CD-Rs just don't cut it anymore for archiving data, last year I bought and installed a DVD burner in my PC - this one, the NEC ND-3550A bought OEM from Newegg. I chose this drive because it was cheap, extremely popular, and highly-rated among Newegg customers. It arrived intact, I installed it as slave to my PC's original drive, and set to burning. Initially, I burned about 5 DVDs, all data, with few complications and only 1 coaster. The drive worked well enough, my HDD had some breathing room again, and I was happy.

Now once again, I find myself running low on HDD space, so it's time to burn some more DVDs. But for the past 2 days, I've tried and tried AND TRIED, but I can't get this piece of sh*t to burn a single disc. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why.

Every attempt goes the same way, without fail. I open the software (Sonic DigitalMedia LE v7, came preinstalled on my Dell), and select a Data Disc. I add the files I want, name the disc, select the DVD drive and insert my media. I click continue, and the process starts... less than 30 seconds into the burn the drive opens and a vague, uninformative error message tells me the attempt failed and that I'll need a new disc to try again. No sh*t.

The drive reads discs, and writes to CD-Rs. I'm not running any applications in the background. I've shut down all the Norton crap, my screensaver, and anything else I can recognize as potentially causing problems or hogging resources. I've updated my drivers, and even updated the firmware for the drive. I've updated the Sonic DM7 LE software, which is a real hassle since each individual component requres an update. I've tried three different brands of DVD+R media: Verbatim, Maxell, and Memorex.

Every. Freakin'. Time. @_@

I've run out of ideas. How can I tell if it's hardware or software, without buying a new one of either? Is there a reliable, free DVD burning program out there I can try? Am I missing something obvious? I tend to do that when it comes to PCs.

Please.

 

[shuri]

buy a new dvd burner.

 

[alr1ght]

burn at a slower speed

 

[Spike Spiegel]

buy a new dvd burner.

Elaborate.

burn at a slower speed

Slower than 4x? 'Cause that's what I set the max speed down to, when the problem started.

 

[S. L.]

make sure the drive is running in DMA mode and not PIO

edit:
you can easily check that with the cpu usage in the task manager when burning. when its 100% or something rather high its running in pio mode
or go to the device manager and check the properties on the ide/ata controller

 

[Diablos]

Ditch the stock firmware. I have a ND-3540A. I've never had problems THAT bad, but you should try flashing to something from Liggy & Dee's site. Their firmware is usually better than what NEC offers!

http://liggydee.cdfreaks.com/page/en/NEC-ND-3550A/

Try 1.Y6 (RPC1). It has some media tweaks and speedups. It could very well be that your current firmware doesn't like the discs that you are using, OR that you are using crappy quality discs (no offense) that better firmware can deal with.

Before you do this though, try another burning program. Get the Nero demo, see if you can successfully burn with it.

Also, when you update your firmware, ensure that you have no disc in the drive or you can kill it. Always restart after flashing.

 

[Space Runaway]

Whats the error message? Are you getting a Power Calibration Error?

 

[Spike Spiegel]

make sure the drive is running in DMA mode and not PIO

edit:
you can easily check that with the cpu usage in the task manager when burning. when its 100% or something rather high its running in pio mode
or go to the device manager and check the properties on the ide/ata controller

Okay, under "Primary IDE Channel Properties," it says that Device 0's transfer mode is "Ultra DMA Mode 2," and Device 1's is "PIO Mode." Is that what you were talking about?

But I can't change anything there...

Diablos, I'm d/l -ing trial Nero 7 right now.

 

[Diablos]

Change it to DMA! That might be the problem...

 

[S. L.]

it IS the problem. if you can't change it uninstall the ide channel and reboot. that usually fixes the problem

 

[Diablos]

Yeah, PIO mode is a no-no. Switch to DMA and restart. Problem should be solved.

 

[Economan]

Are you sure you're burning good movies? When I tried burning Tao of Steve the hard drive got boned.

 

[thatbox]

It should be in DMA mode by default - if it's not you probably have StarForce

 

[Diablos]

I can't believe Starforce got away with that. The people behind it should be jailed.

For example, here's one of the common problems brought by Starforce: under Windows XP, if packets are lost during the reading or writing of a disk, XP interprets this as an error and steps the IDE speed down. Eventually it will revert to 16bit compatibility mode rendering a CD/DVD writer virtually unusable. In some circumstances certain drives cannot cope with this mode and it results in physical hardware failure (Most commonly in multiformat CD/DVD writer drives). A sure sign of this step down occurring is that the burn speeds will get slower and slower (no matter what speed you select to burn at). Starforce, on a regular basis, triggers this silent step down. Until it reaches the latter stages most people do not even realise it is happening.

****ing assholes.

 

[knitoe]

Okay, under "Primary IDE Channel Properties," it says that Device 0's transfer mode is "Ultra DMA Mode 2," and Device 1's is "PIO Mode." Is that what you were talking about?

But I can't change anything there...

Diablos, I'm d/l -ing trial Nero 7 right now.

Under "Device Manager" > ""Primary IDE Channel" Properties > "Advanced Settings" tab, what does it say next to "Transfer Mode" and "Current Transfer Mode?"

If "Transfer Mode" isn't "DMA if available, select it and restart computer. If it is, could be drive firmware and/or drivers.

 

[madara]

Sounds TMPA error and you need new drive. Too much porn archiving has destroyed a great many burners Im afriad.

 

[Spike Spiegel]

Okay, I went into Device Manager and uninstalled the Primary IDE Channel, then rebooted. I reopened Device Manager to check, and both of my disc drives were set to PIO only, so I set them to DMA if available and rebooted again. And when it came back up...

Same sh*t. Device 0 is Ultra DMA Mode 2, Device 1 is PIO.

I looked up Starforce and saw how to check for it... nope.

Also, for some reason my Device Manager had two "Primary IDE Channel" tabs. Should I have deleted them both?

 

[Jake.]

try using different burning software.

 

[S. L.]

nah only the one that had a device in PIO mode.
ok, i had the same problem you have with one of the boxes from my neighbour.
i think one of these two reg fixes resolved the issue

either this regfix
http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/win2kmem/udma66on.reg

or this one (i think it was this one)

I recently found out why my ripping speed seemed to be slow even though I was using a Artec 16X DVD drive and thought this might help some of you. There seems to be a problem with Windows XP Pro where it does not detect CD or DVD ROMs correctly for PIO and DMA. DMA is the idea mode and stands for Direct Memory Access. It does not use near the processor power as PIO and there for will rip faster. You can check your speed easily by ripping some stuff with DVD Decrypter or Smart Ripper. If you are sure your drive is DMA but XP seems stuck on PIO. First check in device manager under IDE controllers that you have it set to "DMA if available" for your DVD Rom. If you reboot and recheck and it is still stuck on PIO which mine were then go to run and type in regedit. Find the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\000X

000X "X" being the number of the controller such as 0001 for primary and 0002 for secondary. Under this location find the key "MasterIdDataCheckSum" or "SlaveIdDataCheckSum" depending on which one your drive is and delete the value for the key. this will force XP to redetect your drive after reboot. Please be careful when editing your registry.
I have gotten both of my XPs running in DMA mode using this methode and on a single layer DVD I can easily hit 10X or higher. In PIO mode I could only hit 2X. That is a big difference and since both of my XP Pros had the problem I would guess it is very common. I hope this helps some of you.

 

[Spike Spiegel]

An update... after reading up on this problem after work, I went into the BIOS to look at the setup there. The PATA-1 (the ND-3550A I'm guessing, since PATA-0 was my primary drive) was turned "Off." So I turned it "On", booted up XP, and checked the Device Manager settings. Both drives are now set at Ultra DMA Mode 2.

I'll try writing a DVD now to see if it's working. Wish me luck.

 

[Spike Spiegel]

...No go. And when I tried burning a disc in Nero, I got that "Power Calibration Error" Message that Space A Cobra mentioned. From what I read that either means I need to clean the drive or it's dying and I'm f*cked. That about right?

 

[Spike Spiegel]

*bump*

So... any more ideas? Today I cleaned it, tried writing DVDs in Nero and Sonic, got the same error and coaster. I'm thinking that at this point all I need is for someone to pronounce so I can rip this drive out of my system and fork over the money for a new one.

 

[Eric P]

Can i make a suggestion?

I was running into issues buring w/ my sony drive using commercial software at 2x speed (long time to burn a coaster....) but then I downloaded Image Burn and am having no problems at all.