Very strange DVD+RW problem

Okay. I've sort of got round this problem but don't know exactly why it happened in the first place and wondered if anyone here could shed some light on what happened to my laptop.

My machine is a Dell Inspiron 9100, 3.4 Ghz P4, 256Mb Radeon 9800, 2Gb RAM. The DVD+RW drive is a Sony DW-R56A.

My DVD+RW drive was working fine. I was playing a new CD on it and then by the end of the day the drive would not read copied or original CD-Roms, would not write CD's, or erase DVD+RW discs. It would still read all types of DVD and would write to fresh DVD discs as long as they did not need erasing.

Thinking it must be some form of software issue to do with copy protection on the music CD I was listening to, I thought of formatting the drive with my original XP disc. I couldn't do this because the drive wasn't reading it in Windows and it wouldn't boot from it outside of Windows either. Seemed like a Hardware failure.

I bought a new internal DVD Rom drive for my Inspiron and the new drive worked fine. Booted from the Windows XP installation disc and got a fresh copy of Windows on there.

Put in my Old DVD+RW drive out of curiosity and it worked fine too...

...until I put a new music CD in it and copied it to iTunes, after which the drive wouldn't copy CD's.

I replace it with the DVD Rom dive, and that worked fine so did a fresh install again and then the DVD+RW drive worked fine again.

I tried the new music CD in my computer at work and the drive continued to work after importing songs so it's obviously my drive but why does it always only fail when I import songs from a music CD?

I've just stopped copying music to my PC as I need to use my DVD+RW drive a lot for backups and can't afford for it to fail. But it shouldn't be failing like this, should it?

Any help would greatly appreciated.

 

That is odd. Perhaps updating your ide drivers would help. They drive just may be going as well.

 

Sounds like one of the rootkit copy protections to me. Similar to how StarForce works. I despise those protection schemes as they're malicious virii that are legally allowed and can actually destroy hardware.

 

The same thing has happened to my external(!) Plextor drive. I can no longer burn CD's with iTunes, or other, but handles DVD's just fine. My best guess is that our drives power calibration has failed for the CD formats.

Fortunately for me my internal NEC has been rock solid but no future Plextors for me as this is my second Plextor failure.

 

Thanks for the input guys. I'm just glad I bought that second regular DVD drive as at least now I will always be able to boot from Disk if needs be. It's very strange though. I don't get why it works after formatting the drive and clean installing Windows. It does have the hallmarks of a copy protection issue doesn't it?

Rob

 

I had a possibly related issue, and I'm wondering if it has something to do with copy protection as well.

I found that when I tried to burn DVD's, it was extremely slow, so I checked the IDE drivers and my DVD drive was set to PIO Only. I switched it to DMA if available, but ultimately had to uninstall the driver, have Windows 'discover' the new hardware, and reinstall the drivers to get it into DMA mode.

Anyway, I burned a couple of dvds after that with no problems - very quick. Then, I noticed that it was very slow again, so I went back and checked the IDE drivers, and it was back to PIO Only. So, again, I had to reiinstall the drivers to get it back to DMA.

Is this some form of copy protection - to make the drive slow as hell without actually harming it?

 

I've never heard of a copy protection scheme to switch your drive into PIO mode. You should make sure in your BIOS, you have whatever IDE channel your drive is on set to “DMA only” to avoid this issue. I suggest upgrading your drive’s firmware to the most current firmware offered by the drive’s manufacture as well.

As for the problems for the others with CD read issues, to me it seems like a hardware issue, not copy protection. CD/DVD drives sometimes lose read ability for certain media after use. I had a Lite-On 52327S that could burn CDs, but not read them. It would and still burns perfect audio/data discs, but it simply cannot read them. I've seen cases where DVD drives will not read DVD discs, but will burn them.

 

There was/is a bug in windows that will change your DVD to PIO mode if windows detects or thinks it detects certain errors. This happened all the time with my old pioneer drive. I might have read there was a windows update for this? Anyway, my current laptop has no problem with unwanted mode changes.

I've updated drivers and changed media on my external Plextor so i would agree with a hardware issue not a "copy protection" issue.

 

I agree, it's got to be some kind of hardware issue but there's must be a software issue in there as well, surely. As when I format my PC with a clean install of XP it works fine again. It's only upon copying 'certain' audio cd's to my hard drive that the drive stops working again. That can't be a coincidence can it?

Perhaps copy protection is exposing a hardware flaw in the drive? Does that sound feesible?

 

It isn't so much a hardware "flaw" as it is the protection software takes advantage of the hardware. You may want to ask around at Doom9 or CDFreaks. They'll likely be more helpful.

 

If the drive works after a re-install of Windows, then it may be a software issue after all. Like I suggested in my previous response, update your drive's firmware. Also try un-installing the Windows IDE drivers and re-installing them. Make sure you're running SP2 and with all the updates.