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    Problem with HEL80 dvd burner

    Discussion in 'Other Manufacturers' started by unleashthemonkey, Nov 15, 2007.

  1. unleashthemonkey

    unleashthemonkey Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi, I have a compal HEL80 and I have recently had trouble with my dvd burner. A couple days ago I burned a few dvds and it worked fine... it burned at 4x which is what I have it set for. Today, when I tried to burn some dvds... it won't burn any faster than .7x. I am using the same dvds and the same programs. Can anyone suggest anything to do or is my dvd drive just screwed up?
     
    unleashthemonkey, Nov 15, 2007
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  2. LucidBurner

    LucidBurner Notebook Geek

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    hows your HDD space?
     
    LucidBurner, Nov 15, 2007
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  3. remzi

    remzi Notebook Guru

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    You may need to defrag your hard drive to get higher burning speeds. And check if some program actively uses your disk while burning dvd.
     
    remzi, Nov 15, 2007
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  4. unleashthemonkey

    unleashthemonkey Notebook Enthusiast

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    My hard drive space is a bit low but its the same level that it was at a couple days ago when I burned those dvds. I defragged m computer and I''m gonna try to burn something today to see if it helped.
     
    unleashthemonkey, Nov 15, 2007
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  5. unleashthemonkey

    unleashthemonkey Notebook Enthusiast

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    I defragged my hard drive and I am still getting these terrible burning speeds. I really dont know why it is doing this because it was working perfectly just a few days ago.
     
    unleashthemonkey, Nov 15, 2007
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  6. unleashthemonkey

    unleashthemonkey Notebook Enthusiast

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    So I used hdtune on my hard drive, I've never done it before but I have a lot of spikes. If they aren't normal it might be why my burn speeds r so bad but idk what to do to stop the spikes.
     

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    unleashthemonkey, Nov 15, 2007
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  7. remzi

    remzi Notebook Guru

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    Well, with my old notebook I had a similar problem, which was a chipset/operating system issue. The OS was forgetting the chipset's capabilities and putting the hard drives and optical drives to a lower speed (by modifying the DMA settings).

    If yours is a similar problem, I recommend checking the `Advanced` IDE Channel Properties (under IDE/ATAPI controllers) from Device Manager. If your dvd burner's `Current Transfer Mode` is set to `PIO Mode`, you may have the same problem.
     
    remzi, Nov 15, 2007
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  8. unleashthemonkey

    unleashthemonkey Notebook Enthusiast

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    Yes my dvd drive does say PIO mode... I dont understand why it would suddenly start doing this because as I said, it was working fine before. What should I do about the transfer mode setting. Nice avatar by the way.
     
    unleashthemonkey, Nov 15, 2007
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  9. remzi

    remzi Notebook Guru

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    First of all, this PIO thing may indicate a hardware failure (chipset or dvd burner), but mostly its because of a bug of Windows (there even was an article at MS website about it)

    -Uninstall everything under `IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers` from device manager.
    -Restart your computer to see if Windows can fix the problem itself.
    -If not, download the latest chipset software from Intel. (Prefer the ZIP format version)
    -Unzip the file and install it with this switch and reboot: `setup.exe -OVERALL -OVERIDE`

    You can get the chipset driver from here:
    http://downloadmirror.intel.com/14529/a08/infinst_autol.zip

    Hope these steps help, good luck. :)

    P.S. The avatar is from `Futurama`. It's my favorite TV show, I really recommend it to every computer geek as, it's based on technology and computer related stuff :)
     
    remzi, Nov 16, 2007
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