Hello I can't read any DVD Disks on the drive ,but I can burn before writing this i look up in the fourum to see if anybody had this problem - and when I found one i did as it said - but I if it doesn't work I did something wrong. can u help me pls? (in the device manager it's said that I have : MAD DOG MD-16X2DVD9-8X and not a NEC ND-3550A ) thank u !
Did the guide you read say anything about updating the firmware? I'd do that. The f/w from the Mad Dog site is pretty good, so use that rather than modding your drive to be a 3550a.
But my drive is 3550a, now let say I want to remove MAD DOG - how do I do this? every time I remove it and do restart it's coming back
The NEC is the Original Equipment Manufacturer. The Mad Dog is a rebadged ND-3550a. It should be possible to crossflash one to the other, but it's best to keep it as is. The Mad Dog firmware features bitsetting for single-layer DVD+R discs, which is a nice feature the official ND-3550a does not have. But there are hacked 3550 firmwares that will give you that feature, and they work well - I use one myself. If you drive is reporting as a Mad Dog, I'd say it's better to use the Mad Dog updates; if it's reporting as a 3550, then go to http://liggydee.cdfreaks.com, download "Liggy's ND3550 Bitsetting Firmware 1.06". You will been binflash to install it. There's a link and a how-to on the left side to Liggy's site for that. Restart in safe mode and flash. If your drive is still fixable, then you'll have a new, better firmware. I believe you can "rebadge" the drive yourself e.g. from Mad Dog to NEC by just doing the latter, but, as I said, there is no advantage to doing this and you could potentially kill your drive.
I did evreything u said but still I cant read DVD in the drive I can burn into DVD,CD ,I can read CD what else can I do? thank u for you'r time!
I find that to be really bizarre, as a drive with a dying laser should have more trouble burning but not reading. You can try uninstalling the drive from Windows' Device Manager (right-click on the appropriate drive and select Uninstall) and then reboot. Windows should find it and reinstall the drivers appropriate to it. If you don't mind cracking open your computer's case, it might help a little to, instead of rebooting, shut down and then disconnect the drive cable, then boot and let Windows "see" that the drive is gone. When you reconnect the drive and boot again, Windows should refresh the driver files.
I did all that and stiil can't read any DVD -sometime it say that the disk is dameged and windows cant read it - even if this is a new DVD from the store not burned one, or when i burn the sidk a min' before on the drive and want to see what a burned - cant see not make any sence ha?
The last thing you can try is moving the burner to another computer if available - if it works, it's most likely a driver issue. Otherwise, I'd suspect the burner is on the fritz.
Listen to this my friend brought me a DVD disk with game in it and it read it with no problem at all. and then I thought maybe the problem is in the burnning ? when I burn disk and want to read it it give me a massage that said: "windows can't read from the disk. the disk might be corrupted or using format not compatible with windows". what do u think? or maybe it's only when I burn a avi files?
Very likely. I didn't realize this problem was only with burned discs, I though (assumed, rather) it was true of commercially-bought discs. If you can read commercially-pressed discs but not ones you've burned yourself, it's an indication of a burning problem. Try using different media. See my sig below on media issues and what to use. Let me know how it works out.
No. Once a disc is finalized then it shouldn't matter, and my 3550a reads anything but DVD-RAM, and it may be possible to hack it so it even reads that. If your drive reads commercial discs and writes ok, but doesn't read discs you've burned, it's conceivable that the reader phototransistor is dirty or dying. But if you can read burned discs from other drives, or old ones, or ones from someone else, it's almost certainly a media (or software burning) problem. My sig below goes into media issues, but also try different burning software.