PDA

View Full Version : DVD-RW under WinXP has multiple personality disorder?


OverCoat
11-14-2007, 07:09 AM
This is a hard problem to google solutions for, and kind of an odd one to explain, so I'll leave the comprehension up to human understanding instead of some keyword-based chaotic sentence.

Okay, so I've had this fancy shiny useless 16x dual layer DVD-RW drive for a few years, and I'm finally fed up with it and I want to either get it replaced or fix it. The problem is as follows:

Watching "My Computer" as I insert a disc. With no disc in the drive, it displays correctly as a DVD-RW. Once I actually insert a DVD-R disc in the drive, it suddenly changes into a CD-ROM drive, therefore confusing the fuck out of both me and Nero. The history of this drive is a weird one. I've had it since 2004, and it's never been able to burn anything. Not even a CD, though I have burned a few movies with a strange trial version of NeroVision a few times, though it would have a lot of errors and I'd go through a few discs before a successful burn. However, it does play back both CD and DVD formats. It's a "Philips DVD-+RW DVD8631," and a quick google search registers complaints for this shitty drive all across the board.

As a temporary solution I've been burning files to DVD across the network on another computer. HOWEVER - and this is what confuses me - the owner of this computer [my mother, of course] got rid of the software I was running [legal copy of Nero 5.5... they won't let me upgrade to 7 for some reason, but that's another story] which did actually work before, and then she replaced it with a fucking trial version of 7... which I ended up not really liking, though she needed it for some damn thing... anyway, the trial version dried up, so I tried reinstalling Nero 5.5. Installation successful, but then that schizo drive issue started happening with her computer! So now I'm stuck with no DVD burner at all, so I can't fucking back up my files for the foreseeable future.

My question is: Can I get WinXP to stop changing the drive functionality?

I'm not sure when it started, and I'm thinking it could be some Microsoft-injected anti-piracy method gone horribly wrong. I wonder if I can burn DVDs under Ubuntu. But then again, how would I get the files off an NTFS drive without leet linux skills?

Please help?

OverCoat
11-19-2007, 09:25 AM
Okay, I did a little more digging on my own [thanks for all that wonderful help, guys!]. I upgraded to Nero 8, which doesn't need you to insert discs to get info on your drives, and the software does indeed know it is there. Once I start burning a data DVD though, it starts to prep the disc, then it just spits it back out with a generic "something went wrong" message.

Apparently the fact that I have a dual layer DVD-RW drive causes some sort of bug in winXP, and there are a few "fixes," one being messing with the DMA on the drives, though DMA is definitely ON. I even flashed the BIOS with the newest revision, and I actually updated the firmware on the drive a few years ago, thinking that would work. There's some other ones but I don't want to risk breaking something, or reformatting anything, making me lose all the important data that I needed to back up in the first place!

Schwaltzvald
11-19-2007, 02:19 PM
Could have replaced the DVD-+RW burner..?

OverCoat
11-21-2007, 06:33 AM
Could have replaced the DVD-+RW burner..?

I probably should have. But I dunno if getting another one would fix the problem. Either way it's too late to replace now, so maybe I can ask the guys at the computer store what I need to do. Maybe they'd know. Maybe.:sleepdepriv:

Schwaltzvald
11-21-2007, 01:06 PM
Unless you've somehow soldered the burner to ur PC it's never too late...

Just open ur case and take it out, replace it with a new one that fits within the case and voila. Just need to make sure you've removed any unecessary drivers/software...

Look on the bright side of this... At least you're not running Vista, where as if you did it would have cried "FOUL" if you replaced the burner. :lol:

Correct me if I'm wrong :)!!