Topic: HELP! Hardware issue (burner content)

[itook2much]

Recently my DVD burner has started acting "funny."  It burns fine, files or video check out fine, but...
Until just a few discs ago, when using Nero or DVDecryptor, the software & device buffers would both stay almost full during the entire burn, which would vary in speed slightly of course, but for the most part was maxed out at 4X (it's a 4X burner).

Now, regardless of whether I'm burning video or FLACs to DVD, the device buffer is up & down from full to almost empty, & the speed is maxing out at about 2X...& it often rides at about 1.5X.

It still works, it's just taking a helluva lot more time to do anything.  It has the last available driver & it's had a firmware upgrade, not recently tho so that's not the cause.  Windoze says it's working A-OK (of course     ).

Any ideas what the deal is?  And how I can fix it?

Thanks,

Reggie

[Ray76]

Recently my DVD burner has started acting "funny."  It burns fine, files or video check out fine, but...
Until just a few discs ago, when using Nero or DVDecryptor, the software & device buffers would both stay almost full during the entire burn, which would vary in speed slightly of course, but for the most part was maxed out at 4X (it's a 4X burner).

Now, regardless of whether I'm burning video or FLACs to DVD, the device buffer is up & down from full to almost empty, & the speed is maxing out at about 2X...& it often rides at about 1.5X.

It still works, it's just taking a helluva lot more time to do anything.  It has the last available driver & it's had a firmware upgrade, not recently tho so that's not the cause.  Windoze says it's working A-OK (of course     ).

Any ideas what the deal is?  And how I can fix it?

Thanks,

Reggie

Go to my computer/control panel/
 click and open the System icon
Go to the hardware tab and click the button that says hardware manager or device manager
from the list click to expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers

there should be 3 things(i think) listed in the IDE section
double click to open the properies screen
click the advanced settings tab  and
choose the DMA if available mode from BOTH of the transfer mode boxes

that is what was wrong with my wifes pc.

[itook2much]

primary was on DMA, but secondary was PIO.

I'll check it out in a while, hope it works

+T, thanks for the help Ray

[Ray76]

primary was on DMA, but secondary was PIO.

I'll check it out in a while, hope it works

+T, thanks for the help Ray

if it dont, get back to me hoss.

+T backatcha

[itook2much]

No luck, still "funny."
Gonna "clean" out Nero6 using their program, then re-install & update.  I'll let ya know how it goes, should get it done tomorrow hopefully.

[Ray76]

No luck, still "funny."
Gonna "clean" out Nero6 using their program, then re-install & update.  I'll let ya know how it goes, should get it done tomorrow hopefully.

right on man, im here.

[itook2much]

No dice on the Nero re-install.
Changing anti-virus programs, gonna update that & my spyware program, & scan.  May be that something "malicious" is eating up my CPU power.

If that doesn't work, I'm just gonna finish burning all of the recent shows I've put on the HD & I'll try doing a "restore" to a week ago before the problem started.

[Ray76]

No dice on the Nero re-install.
Changing anti-virus programs, gonna update that & my spyware program, & scan.  May be that something "malicious" is eating up my CPU power.

If that doesn't work, I'm just gonna finish burning all of the recent shows I've put on the HD & I'll try doing a "restore" to a week ago before the problem started.

get adaware, nod 32, and spy sweeper.
those 3 work great together IME.
nod 32 is by far the best AV i have ever used.oh and M$ antispyware works well too.

[dnsacks]

have you confirmed that the burner's operating in DMA mode?

Are there any other devices on the channel (ribbon cable) that the burner uses?

[Ray76]

have you confirmed that the burner's operating in DMA mode?

Are there any other devices on the channel (ribbon cable) that the burner uses?

yeah he did that.

[dnsacks]

Understood -- just sounds like it's still (or back) in PIO mode.  An easy fix to this is to simply delete the burner from the device manager and reboot.  Windoze will find the "new" burner and reinstall drivers (sometimes the PIO switching is caused by a bad/conflicted driver).

Also, if you have a second device operating on the same ide channel/cable as the burner (a hard drive or cd reader) you can frequently solve this problem by (at least temporarily) disconnecting the second device from the ide cable.

Finally, definitely worth defragmenting your hard drive -- you'd be surprised with how badly a fragmented hard drive can screw things up.  Also, be sure you have at least 1/3 of your hdd space free.

[itook2much]

Plenty of free space, DMA had been checked already, & with the number of DVD trades I do, I defrag regularly.

I do use SpySweeper, Ray.  It seems to be the best.
But...after 3 different anti-virus programs, updates & sweeps with each, I finally found the problem:  3 Trojan Horses.

Only DVD I've burned since the fix was with DVDShrink, so I couldn't see the buffer use, but I could tell that it ran muuuuuch faster.  And the "rip" to HD with DVDDecryptor was also way faster.  I usually extract DVD video with it at 2X, this one averaged 2X & peaked at 2.2X.   So I'd say the problem is fixed.

Thanks everyone for the help, it's very much appreciated.
+Ts all around

[Ray76]

Plenty of free space, DMA had been checked already, & with the number of DVD trades I do, I defrag regularly.

I do use SpySweeper, Ray.  It seems to be the best.
But...after 3 different anti-virus programs, updates & sweeps with each, I finally found the problem:  3 Trojan Horses.

Only DVD I've burned since the fix was with DVDShrink, so I couldn't see the buffer use, but I could tell that it ran muuuuuch faster.  And the "rip" to HD with DVDDecryptor was also way faster.  I usually extract DVD video with it at 2X, this one averaged 2X & peaked at 2.2X.   So I'd say the problem is fixed.

Thanks everyone for the help, it's very much appreciated.
+Ts all around

YOu should stay away from animal porn and online casinos.  +T

[itook2much]

YOu should stay away from animal porn and online casinos.

You should quit PMing the links

Still didn't seem quite back to normal, so I uninstalled the burner, rebooted to reinstall...then uninstalled the IDE secondary, then rebooted to reinstall.

No running at max speed, finally

Thanks for all the help +T

[Ray76]

YOu should stay away from animal porn and online casinos.

You should quit PMing the links

Still didn't seem quite back to normal, so I uninstalled the burner, rebooted to reinstall...then uninstalled the IDE secondary, then rebooted to reinstall.

No running at max speed, finally

Thanks for all the help +T

Glad it finally worked for you hoss.

Hope it stays stable!+T