NEC DVD-R/RW Burner woes...

Hey,

I have an old windows 98 machine (second edition), a Gateway about 4 years old...I just bought a new NEC 2510A DVD Burner (dual layer) and i installed physically grand...nero recognises the drive and windows seems to (the name of the drive eg. _NECetc, comes up in device manager).
Nero doesn't seem to recognise when i place a blank dvd into it...it claims that nothing is there...would I need extra drivers for windows or what?

However, I'm thinking that would it be possible for something like other out of date components (maybe the motherboard) to limit the speed of the new dvd burner drive?
Nothing came with the drive, I was expecting some drivers or something...if anyone could shed any light on the whole thing , it would be great,
thanks very much.

MazdaMan

What version of Nero do you have, to get full burning support for the drive as a DVD player, you might want to upgrade to the latest version on the Nero website.

Anything prior to version 6 will have limited support for DVD drives. Also ensure that Win 98 has all the latest microsoft updates to ensure compatibility with the drive.

You could also try this free program to see if it recognises the drive as a DVD burner
http://www.burn4free.com/

aidan_dunne

Sorry if it seems like I'm hijacking your thread, MoonHawk, but it seems I could be in a similar boat to yourself so hopefully we both might be able to get a solution to our respective problems.

Bought a NEC ND2500 single-layer drive a few months ago and all seemed to be going well. Managed to backup a fair few DVDs no problem. Then, one day, I put a blank DVD-R into the drive and it didn't detect it properly. In the drive properties pie-chart thingy it was coming up as all blue instead of pink with no space available and was RAW. Now, nothing had changed on the PC, out of the blue it just seemed to stop detecting blanks. Normal CDs, CD-R's/RWs and DVDs continued to work grand, as did DVD-RW's, but standard blank DVDs just wouldn't detect properly. Thought it might have been the discs I was using but I tried several different types, both DVD-R and DVD+R, but to no avail.

I reinstalled my writing software (Easy CD/DVD Creator) and DVD Video copying software (Pinnacle InstantCopy) but it didn't work. Downloaded every upadate you can imagine for both packages, no joy. Thought it might be an IDE or ATAPI/ASPI problem so I tried different ATAPI/ASPI drivers, no joy. Checked the drives and IDE settings were set to "DMA where available" mode instead of PIO, still no joy. Reinstalled my IDE drivers, no luck. Installed Windows XP's standard IDE drivers, still no luck. I did just about everything I could think of to get the thing working again (including flashing the drive's firmware with the latest, official NEC firmware. Flashed okay) but to no avail.

So, a couple of weeks ago I went and reinstalled Windows and everything from scratch. Everything seemed to be back to normal again, lovely pink pie chart showing 4.whatever GB's free on the disc. Turned off the computer, came back the next day, turned it on again, the whole thing had gone down the pisser on me again! I've downloaded all the latest updates and patches for Easy CD Creator and Pinnacle InstantCopy and I have tried everything I can think of to solve this but to no avail. So, has anyone had a problem like this and, if you have, were you able to solve it and, if so, how? I'm on my knees begging you all out there for a solution as I'm desperate to get the drive working again. Up until this all happened, I was more than happy with the drive and it was going fine for me. Please help! Anyone?

P.S. Here's the system specs, just so you know, but I don't think there's anything wrong here as it was working fine before, as I said above: Pentium 4 1.8GHz, 384MB RAM, 64MB nVidia GeForce 2, 80GB and 10GB Hard Drives (Primary Master and Slave respectively), NED ND2500 DVD+-R/RW Drive and Standard 16x DVD Drive (Secondary Master and Slave respectively).

P.P.S. Running Windows XP SP1 with all the latest updates on the 80GB HDD (it's partitioned into a 20GB partition which holds Windows and all the software and a 60GB partition which holds all my data, ripped DVD's, MP3's etc.). The second hard drive, the 10GB one, is running Windows 98 and I only boot up that when I want to play an older game or whatever that doesn't run well or at all in Windows XP, eg. DOS games. Though, at the moment, in Windows 98 it's detecting the drive and discs and everything okay but I don't know how long that will last until the same thing happens there as what happened under Windows XP. I really, really want to get it working properly under XP again, though.

MazdaMan

Aiden Dunne,

Have you tried updating the firmware for the drive. You can get the latest here http://www.firmware.fr.st/

Ensure you choose the correct firmware for you model/make of drive. Also follow instructions carefully.

aidan_dunne

Yep, did that, metioned it in my post above. Wasn't going to risk one of those potentially dodgy, hacked firmwares you see around so only went with the genuine NEC firmware. Didn't make any difference, I'm afraid. Was one of the first things I tried, actually.

aidan_dunne

*bump*

Anyone got any ideas? Please? I'm getting desperate to get this drive working again.

Optikus

Make sure the following registry key reads like this

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinLogon - AllocateCDRoms must = 0 (zero)

If it equals 1 change it to zero if not leave it.

aidan_dunne

Checked it, Optikus. It's set to 0 alright. Got any other possible ideas?

Optikus

Have you tried uninstalling the drive restarting then reinstalling it, not much else i can think off.

aidan_dunne

Yep, Optikus, tried that quite a few times and was one of the very first things I tried, both before I re-installed Windows and after I re-installed it when this trouble started again.

Anyone else got any possible solutions? I've Googled like there was no tomorrow for a solution but I can't even find anyone else that has ever reported a similar problem to this. Though, this is not the first time I've seen this kind of thing happen as a friend of mine who bought a NEC ND1300 (slightly older-model) drive a few months before I bought mine had an almost identical problem happen to him after a while too.

Has anyone else here seen a similar problem with one of these drives? Just curious if you have and do you know how (if possible) it can be fixed?

banbutcher

ive an idea... give me the dvd burner and you wont have that prob any more!!!