DVD burning problems

billstraighten

hi all

just a few queries ... i had a dell pc and i had a 16X dvd burner and when i burned dvds (around 4GB) at 8X it took around 15 mins

now i have a new medion pc and a 16X dvd burner and when i burn dvds (around 2.5GB) it takes around 45 mins! ...i have been using the same software (nero) and have rang up medion complaining and they have said "oh wipe ur pc and if the problem persists ring us next week" ..any advice that you can give that would help burn the dvd's faster (without having to wipe my pc)

Thanks a lot in Advance

Ruu_Old

What brand of discs are you using? If its the same all the time, maybe try a different brand and see if it makes any difference.

jor el

Two things to check. Are you using an IDE hard disk and IDE DVD writer and are they on the same cable by any chance? If they are on the same cable then this can slow down the transfer rate from one to the other.

The 2nd thing to check is if DMA mode is enabled on both harddisk and DVD writer. To check this, you need to open the device manager. Right click My Computer and select properties, then on the Hardware tab click Device Manager. Under the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers double click on both Primary and Secondary IDE channel to check the modes for both. On the Advanced Settings tab here you should have "DMA If Available" selected for transfer modes on both Master and Slave (Device 0 and Device 1). If anything is in PIO mode then that's a problem.

If this isn't the problem then try different discs. Can you also try your old DVD writer from the Dell in the new PC by any chance?

8T8

If you have Nero installed run Nero Info Tool, after it starts click the save button (a floppy disk icon) and then save its report to a txt file.

Then attach the txt file to your next post in this thread and we can take a look at the settings for your optical drives & see if anything is wrong.

Just on the information you provided here are the usual sources of the problem;
DMA could possibly not be enabled.
The firmware of the DVD writer does not support the media.
Bad batch of media.
Defective writer if it does this with all types of media.

billstraighten

Jor el ... i did what u suggested and got this ...i changed it to DMA if available ...but it is in PIO mode ...like the pic shows, u say thats a problem ..can u explain? thanks a lot for the help

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y254/billstraightener/dvdburning.jpg

8T8

What you need to do is uninstall the primary IDE controller from the device manager (right click on it and select uninstall). After the computer reboots and windows loads it will re-install the IDE controller driver (& may prompt another reboot) that will reset it and your DVD writer should now be working in DMA mode.

Standard Toaster

Remove the dvdrw from device manager (remove second drive if you have one too) and reboot the machine.
Windows reverts to PIO mode on an optical drive if it has 4 or more consecutive read errors. It doesn't re-enable DMA later though.

Failing that, remove the IDE contollers and reboot.