LG GSA-H55N dvd burner. Has firmware v1.04. It used to work fine. Could burn anything. I checked the DMA settings. They're fine. I also used the reset DMA tool in dvd-fab burning software and rebooted. Testing with several pre-burned DVDs. In Shrink it can read the DVD. It prompts for the blank. Pop in the blank and writes the "lead-in" forever whizzing loudly. Then after 10 minute you cancel and the light turns on and it seems to start burning and does not cancel immediately. As I said it used to work fine. IN DVD-Fab, similar behaviour is exhibited. Then you click cancel and it starts whizzing fast and the green light goes on. After a few minutes it pops out the disk and you can see on the shiny side that about half is burned. But it's unreadable. Also in device properties from explorer in the Recording tab I turned off the "Enable CD recording". Did not help. This is a friends computer, I think a different DVD burner was tried and exhibited the same problem. So I think it might be a windows setting, or a windows problem, or some other weird hardware problem not necessary related to the DVD burner, but to some portion of the system required for writing DVDs but not reading. Just a friendly reminder that the DMA settings are good. Any suggestions are appreciated (in advance). Cheers! tls2
Most likely the burner has died. You need to treat CD and DVD burning independently of each other. I have seen DVD burners go bad in that they could burn CDs but not DVDs. "I think a different DVD burner was tried and exhibited the same problem" <--You need to verify this for fact. "I think" leaves a big gaping hole in your troubleshooting procedure. I'm still betting that the hardware has died. It is the most likely explanation but the last one that people choose to consider.
I have not tried to burn a CD. Don't even know if that works. The disabling of the "enable CD burning" is something I found on the Mikrosoft web site. Figured I try. This burner has been lighly used. Can't have burned more than 100 DVDs and 0 CDs (there's a separate CD burner in the machine). I will double check about if they attempted to replace the DVD burner in the past and if the new one exhibited the same problem. I guess my next question is which should I do next? (A) Take a working burner from my machine and put it in the problematic macxhine and see what happens? (B) Take the problematic burner and put it in my machine and see what happens? Thanks! tls2
Probably both to be 100% sure. I could be wrong in my assumption, but I will say that in every instance I have experienced with your symptoms it was bad hardware.
@ tls2 dailun gave you some pretty sound advice, but after the "switch". test, I would Just Replace the Drive. If the Drive is still under Warrenty, you may not even Have to pay for a replacement.
Thanks for all the advice. I spoke with the owner. They did try to install a new drive and it exhibited the same behaviour. But alas, I was not there and the ower is not technical savy and may not have all the details correct. The drive is a few years old and good luck finding the bill anyways. At futureshop they have an LG-GH22LP20 for $35... too bad the store accross from my office is OOS. I'll hafta find it elsewhere. I'll keep y'all posted
Try Here http://www.newegg.com This Looks Nice http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136147
Thanks but futureshop should have trigged you to think Canada.... At newegg.ca it's $30 + $4 handling (??) + $13 shipping... makes $47. And then if it exhibits the same problem? Back it goes for another $12+++ : tls2
Ok...some news! I put the suspicous dvd drive in my computer. I removed my second drive and compared jumpers. The supsicious drive was set to SLA (slave) and mine was set to CS (automatic?). So I changed the suspicous drive to CS and installed it. I tried copying a DVD ... it worked! Hmmm... Note that in the suspicious computer the first drive is a CDROM and the second drive is a DVD. I did find nero drive tool in the control panel of the suspicious computer. This tool can deny access to the burners. It was set to admins only. The one and only user on the machine (auto login) is an admin (I checked users in the control panel). Any suggestions? 1) I can remove the cdrom and only use the dvd. 2) I can try my good dvd in the suspicious computer. 3) I cna put back the suspicious dvd with the CS (instead of SLA) jumper. 4) ??? Thanks! tls2
I put back the suspicious DVD drive in the suspicious computer. I left the jumper at CS. I disconnected the CDROM. I turned off the SATA in the bios. (No sata drives). I checked all the setting in the bios and they seem reasonable. I booted up. It found new hardware (removal of sata). Rebooted again. Tried buring in shrink...it died as usual. I noticed it was trying to burn at 16x... maybe to difficult for the system. I tried to burn at 4x... same behaviour. ho humm.... Might it be a hardware problem in the motherboard? Might I need to reinstall Windows? Thanks! tls2b
OK. If the master/slace/CS setting were wrong the drive probably wouldn't work at all. There is a REMOTE possibility that if you had two drives set for the same setting that one would act unpredictable but then the other drive wouldn't work. Did you use the same software in both computers for your test. For something like this you need to be sure that you are testing "apples to apples" (ex. Not Nero in one computer and not the other.) Motherboard? I doubt it. You can always try putting the optical drive in the suspicious computer on the same cable as the HDD (making sure that you jumper for SL of course). Reinstall Windows? I doubt that even more. I don't see a logical connection there. I can't see a situation where either of those components would cause "read but not write". Sorry I'm not being as helpful as either of us would like. All things being equal, and performing the same activities on both systems, you should be able to narrow it down by seeing where the symptom follows. There was another thread a few weeks ago with this same symptom and that turned out to be software not hardware but I don't remember off the top of my head what the answer was.
wooohoo! I think I have success....!!!!...!!!>> I swapped cables for the HD and DVD. I swapped them at both ends (the drive and the MB). I booted and tried to burn with no success! Then I simply swapped cabled at the motherboard. Switching IDE ports. The machine booted. I tried to burn and it made it to several percent before I ran here to type this... Hang whilest I go check 40% yahhh babay! I guess it is the IDE port on the motherboard. It has a problem that only affects the DVD and not the hard disk. I can live with that! Thanks everyone! Especially Berryone and dailun!
