Topic: DVD drive problems?

[Swampy]

I got a DVD-RW drive last spring and it never really worked right. Has a hard time playing dvds or cds, they stutter and skip... Has trouble burning dvds, but it would still burn cds... So I go out today and get a new drive, and bam, same problems. So at this point I pretty much know its the computer. Any one heard of anything like this? I followed all the windows troubleshooting advice to no sucess... Can anyone help me out in this matter?

[caymanreview]

how much ram do you have and what processor?

[Swampy]

Ram= 512 DDR
Processor = AMD Athalon XP 1700

[kindms]

Shot in the dark. Power supply ? How much juice do you have in the computer

[Swampy]

donno, can I check this somehow?

[kindms]

It would mean opening the case but should be written on the side of the unit somewhere

[Nick in Edinboro]

Also some thoughts:
  - Enough free HD space?   Empty Temp Files!
  - Defragmented recently?  Defragment!
  - What version of DirectX are you using?  Upgrade to atleast 8 or 9!
  - DMA access option enabled for your internal DVD-ROM?  Should be checked as YES!
  - Might be a problem w/sound card or vid card--do they have latest drivers?  Update them!

Try those Alex!

[dnsacks]

Alex:

Is anything else plugged into the ide channel used by the dvd drive (i.e. is there a hard drive or another cd or dvd drive attached to the (usually grey) flat ribbon cable that connects the drive to your motherboard?

A dvd drive sharing the same ide channel (cable) as, say, your main hard drive could cause this problem.  Ideally your dvd drive should be on its own ide channel (connected to its own cable) and not on the same channel/cable as a hard drive

[Ed.]

Shot in the dark. Power supply ? How much juice do you have in the computer

just a note, its not always the amount of power, but the quality.  i only have a 450w psu, but it way out preforms my old 750w one that was just a cheap off brand pos.

i think i paid around $80 for mine, can't remember the name, could look when i get home from work, but its a quality product and made my computer run 100% better.

[Swampy]

Thanks for the suggestions thus far guys. Nick, I tried almost all of thoes, I cant install the new directx because my internet doesnt work any more... I dont think it would be the video card because it wont even burn dvds, so its not just the playing...

Now, the cable thing... Its only one drive with one cable, so it doesnt share, but where it plugs into the motherboard the HD plugs in right next to it... Is that what you mean? Maybe I should try a new cable?

Thanks for bearing with me guys, I know little about computers really, so thanks. Id like to solve this myself, but my dads friend who built my computer could probably fix it in a jif, but hes done way too much for me already... THANKS!

[Swampy]

Lemmie ask this if no one knows what the problem is... Is there any way to do a disc to disc burn Just using windows? I tried installing Nero, but it doesnt seem to recognize either drive, I have a hard time burning trades and B&Ps on time because I have to rip everything and then burn it... CAN ANYONE HELP ME???

[Ed.]

i think bean was just having this problem with his puter.  i've never tried the disc to disc burn.  always rip with EAC, burn with nero.

[Swampy]

Beauler?

[Steve J]

Alex, as far a I can recall, Windows does not have a native disc-to-disc burning utility. As far as the root problem, I encountered similar difficulties with a DVD burner I installed. In my case, it turned out to be a driver conflict and was resolved by d/l'ing an updated driver. Have you checked the Device Manager for any conflicts (assuming Win XP here)?

[dnsacks]

if your having problems because your trying to copy disks directly (i.e. reading the music off of the disk you want to copy while simultaneously writing the music to a blank disk), you're likely having problems on the read side (i.e. the disk drive you're reading from isn't able to read fast enough to supply the data to your burning drive.

You should really be ripping the disk you want to copy to your hard drive using eac and then burning a copy from the info ripped to your hard drive (since this is really the only way to come close to assuring that the cd you're burning is a accurate copy of the cd you're copying).  If you must burn "on the fly" I suspect that the only way to solve this problem would be to significantly reduce the burner's write speed (to 2x or 4x)

[Swampy]

No, I cant copy directly, thats just ONE of the many things that doesn work (the only thing the drives WILL do is burn audio from the hd, and copy data from discs to HD, nothing else. No playing of CDs or DVDs, no burning of DVDs, no copying ect...) I dont think that there are many people the rip everything to their hd and then burn when it comes to trades, its just impractical IMO.

[dnsacks]

huh --

1) have you confirmed the dma setting for the dvd drive (to be sure it's set to Ultra dma) --

2) what OS are you running?  Have you performed a clean re-install of your OS in the past year or so?

If you've been running on the same install of windows for a while, you could have some corrupted drivers/conflicts that are causing this problem -- a clean re-install could help this (and will likely significantly increase your computer's speed).   The dma setting is crucial as it seems that all your problems are stemming from the computer not being able to read or write data from/to the drive fast enough.  A drive not using dma (direct memory access) will run a lot slower than a drive that is using dma.  One way to try and fix this is to "uninstall" the drive, reboot the pc and let windows automatically reinstall the drive. 

Re copying cds -- It takes me under 5 minutes to rip a cd to my hard drive using eac and under 3 minutes to burn using my dvd burner.  By doing this I'm confident that the cd I'm sending off in trade is a faithful clone/copy of the disk in my collection.  Were I not to do this, there's a very real chance that I'll introduce an audible flaw into the copy I send off.  This flaw will continue to propogate in all of the copies that may be made of the disk I copied.  Since cd trading is all about trading copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of originals and the 30th copy of the 30th copy may well become the seed for a huge bittorrent, etc. it seems to me that we should all do whatever is reasonably practical to assure the integrity of the copies we make for others.  Burning disks on the fly without using programs like EAC that verify accuracy of the data extracted from audio cds, is NOT, imho, a reasonable method of protecting the integrity of the music we've recorded/collected.

[Swampy]

 Windows XP. There has been a clean reinstall... Didn't change anything, its running on DMA... Im just way past trying to understand this now...

[Nick in Edinboro]

Did you use the IDE cable supplied with your drive Alex?

You should be using an Ultra IDE cable, and while a standard IDE cable will fit the throughput of the cable will be much less than it should be:


The one on top with thinner wires is what your shooting for, the one with fatter wires is an older IDE cable.

Just a thought.