DVD Drive misreads blank discs

Hi All: I know we are not supposed to double post, but this has been up on hardware board for a couple of days, and no response. Hoping somebody has even a slight iidea of what could be going on. Please?

NEC ND 2500A DVD+/-RW combo drive.

Pop in a new 4.78gb DVD+R disc, it reports 308MB free/total "CD ". Will record up to 308MB then says disc full. Reads that data that can also be read by DVD ROM.

Reads commercial DVDs,

Reads and writes DVD-R/RW,

Reads and writes CD R/RW.

Reads + discs it previously recorded. Those all ok.

Device Mgr reports all ok. Uninstall, reinstall, no joy. NEC site no help, does have firmware update for 2500A FW, I can't tell if it is the same drive or not. Besides site says firmware update won't solve problems. No updated drivers available. Least not that I can find.

Discs are new Ridata 8X DVD+R, recorded on about 15 of them before problem, went through 10 of them since problem appeard, same results,308MB. Maybe bad batch of discs? I have no way of testing for that.

Two packages of 25 each, tried some from both. Like I said, they worked last week.
I'm about to pull out the rest of my hair!! Anybody???? Help!

Martin

 

Hi martin,
Is this a problem within windows or your burning programme?

FWIW the best site for firmware is the Deutschland NEC site. I use it for firmware updates for my ND1300A drive.

http://www.de.nec.de/softwareoverview2.php/id/557

 

The firmware version should be shown in the BIOS boot of the PC.

Nero InfoTool will give you a whole lot of CD drive info as well.
http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=download.html

In My Computer right click this drive and make sure that Enable CD recording on this drive (or similar?) is unticked.

XP's burning support should be disabled on all CD drives if you use a third party burning programme.

 

Hey Paul: Thanks for sticking with me on this sticky problem. I was able to discover the firmware version 1.06 using Nero as you suggested. Nero 6 is installed on this computer. So I used the toolkit.

Nero reads the blank + discs correctly.

Pinnacle's Instant Write packet writing software auto disables the Windows burning program. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the program, but it did not correct the problem.

I would uninstall it and install Nero's In CD, but I have had a problem previously changing packet writing software. One packet writer would not reformat CD-RW written by another.

I'm beginning to think this may be a SP2 problem.

I'm going to go ahead and install the firmware update and see the results. Will post back.

Thanks again

Martin

 

Hi: I updated the firmware to version l.07. No help on DVD+R.

I uninstalled Instant Write, installed InCD from Nero. No help.

I'm almost convinced this is a hardware problem. But I'm still not convinced that it is not an sp2 problem I'm going to take the drive out, clean it and put it back in.

But since it will write to and InCD and Instant write will both format and write to -RW discs, but will not recognize +R discs, I just am very confused.

I got other things to do than mess around with this anymore for now. Will try some stuff later.

If you have any ideas on this, please let me know.

Martin

 

Some of these problems Martin are just plain frustrating. Goodluck when you bother having another crack at it.

Yes, changing packet writing software can be problematic. Registry cleaning and manual searching can help though.
I went from InCD to Roxio Drag 'n Drop (the updated Direct CD). I'm much happier with DnD.

At least your firmware update was successful!

 

Still battling with it. Things are just getting worse. Now the drive will not recognize the + discs at all, not even as a 308 MB CD, get error message, "Wrong Function"

Even though I'm reasonably sure that it is not the discs themselves, I'm going to run over to Wal-Mart and get some different brand +R and +RW discs and see for sure it is the drive or software and not the discs. May take a day or two (25 miles to nearest Wal Mart, but I refuse to pay Radio Shack prices) I will post back results.

Thanks for your sympathy and help.

Martin