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    OEM Sony Optiarc Smart Bay DVD Fails on Win7 Installs...

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by bkral, Jun 25, 2009.

  1. bkral

    bkral Notebook Consultant

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    Alienware m17x-r1

    Optiarc Smart Bay w/ DVD-RW

    "SATA Optiarc DVD-RW AD-7590S"

    First off. It requires 2 drivers to run at 100% efficiency.

    If only the DVD drive is installed, it sputters when a DVD is inserted and then finally spins up for a few seconds and then stops. This happens like 5-10 times before Windows recognizes there is something in the drive and allows things to be run off o it.

    If the Smart Bay driver is installed... it runs perfectly. This is an OS driver however...

    THE PROBLEM:

    When I boot from a win7 dvd... it takes forever to read it during "Copying Windows Files". It sometimes fails and windows says the dvd drive was removed during copying. About 20% of the time, it will somehow read it all and boot into the Win7 install OS. It then tries to read the DVD AGAIN... and loops indefinately, since win7 install OS only installs the Drive's driver... not the smart-bay driver. So it never actually reads it...

    THE CATCH:

    The same sputtering happens when booting from a Vistax64 dvd... but it eventually installs everything just fine. So I'm guessing the Win7 DVD has a shorter DVD-Drive timeout then the vista drive, most likely to keep the OS from halfway installing and then messing up due to hardware. It makes sense, but it's working against me at this point in time.

    Has anybody experienced this before? I mean, it's nice to have a smartbay for hotswapping HDD's and an extra battery since a DVD-ROM is hardly used in one of my machines... but this is such a damn hassle.


    Thanks in advance.
     
    bkral, Jun 25, 2009
    #1