DVD drive problems.

[Buleste]

Yesterday whilst writing a DVD My DVDRW decided to die. Now I've opened it up to check everything and it's fine. I've tried it on my Miggy and it's fine. Put it back in my PC today and it can't read anything. Anyone any ideas before i go out and waste some money on a new DVD-RW?

[woody.cool]

If it works on your Amiga, and the drive is fully intact, but it doesn't work on the PC, I'd be inclined to look at the IDE (or SCSI or STA or whatever it is) cable and if not, then maybe the IDE (or SCSI or SATA or whatever) controller on the PC is shot!

[Buleste]

I have another drive (a ZIP drive) attached to that IDE cable and that works fine so it's not the cable or the controller. If i insert a DVD or CD before start-up on the PC it recognises that a disk is inserted and tries to read it so it may not be the lens. Is there a trojan or virus that can do this ( I was trying to write a "free" version of Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro at the time)? What i may end up doing is getting a new DVD RW and putting the old one in my miggy.

[Harrison]

If the problem exists with the current drive then there is a chance that any replacement drive you buy will also not work.

First thing to check is that the drive is being detected correctly in the BIOS. If that looks OK then the next thing is to check that it is being detected correctly in Windows, by looking in Device Manager.

If everything looks OK then the problem could be driver corruption or a driver conflict. First go into the Device Manager and look at the properties for the Parallel AGA controller (IDE). Look at the two channel tabs to find the DVD-RW drive and see what transfer mode it has set. Is the box ticked to let the BIOS select the transfer mode? Have you updated your motherboard drivers recently? These include drivers for the IDE channel controller to allow it to work at full speed and activate DMA mode, which the writer needs to be able to burn a disc without taking over all of the CPU's processing time.

Finally if that all looks OK then it could be a software conflict. What CD/DVD software do you have installed? And have you installed anything new, or done any updates recently? If you have Nero installed you could try running its InfoTool and see what it reports for the drive.

A common conflict I used to encounter when setting up systems specifically for DVD replication is a missing or conflicting abstraction layer. Nero for example installs it's own and emulates the process to bypass any system installed versions to try and prevent issues, but this can sometimes cause problems of its own.

[Buleste]

I have a feeling the main motor has died. The only bit of software i've installed before the drive died was Ashampoo Burn Studio 8 and that worked fine. I've ordered a new DVD writer from a local shop for £22.50 which I'll get tomorrow and see if that works.

[woody.cool]

Another thought: you have got the Master/Slave/Cable Select jumper set right haven't you!?!

[Buleste]

It's the same as it was before it stopped working. so it's not that. Like I say I think the main motor has died. I'll find out tomorrow when the new DVD comes in.

[Harrison]

But I thought you said it worked on the Amiga? If the motor has died then it wouldn't work.

[Buleste]

It does. But being as everything else has been ruled out I can't think of anything else. Maybe the Miggy is less sensitive than the PC. I'm not sure. TBH i'll try anything at the mo. Hopefully the Hard drives won't die on my PC so I won't need the DVD at the moment.

[woody.cool]

Other than that, it could be that something on the PCB (inside the drive) has died, possibly something that the Amiga doesn't use.

Another possiblilty. DVD drives have two lazers - one for reading CDs and one for reading DVDs, also reading CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVD+/-Rs and DVD+/-RWs is much less reliable than reading properly manufactured CDs and DVDs