Nero 8 and infamous PMA Update Failure

Hello all,

I have a question regarding a PMA Update Failure. I have a Samsung SH-S203N SB02 DVD+RW. I have been burning DVDs absolutely fine up until today. I have not changed anything at all - not the media, not the firmware, nothing. However, I am now plagued with the PMA Update Failure error. Here's a copy of a burn log from Nero 8:

As you can see, it goes through the whole burn process and stops at the Disc-at-once error. Now I know nine times out of ten this means a media error, however I haven't changed media from what has always been working (Verbatim 16x DVD+R US Retail). Just to be sure, I tried a Verbatim LightScribe DVD+R and got the same result. Then I tried an old Ridata 8x DVD-R that I had lying around, and that worked! I just don't understand it. I know normally you guys would say, well the different media worked, just use that. But why would the other media that I always used suddenly stop working? I even tried updating to the latest firmware, but that didn't change my results either. I don't have a problem using the Ridata's, but it really troubles me that my media that was working suddenly isn't. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike

 

Wow, no help on this one at all? I swiped a couple of blank DVD+R's from work and I'm going to run a test on them to see if I get the error on those as well. I honestly don't know what to do. Anyone have any ideas?

 

How about trying burning at 8x?

 

I'll give that a shot, but honestly, I've never touched the speed I burn at. Whatever the default is (20x usually), is always what I've burned it at. I tried dropping it to 16x on the new discs and it still failed. I'll try it again on 8x. Even if that works, though, how can I get it back to 16x+ again? I never had a problem before.

 

1701MB of your memory is in use. Shut down all programs running in the background. One or more of them can conflict.

 

No such luck. It seems it doesn't like the TDK brand media either. I've never tried this brand before, so I'm not sure it ever worked with my drive, but now both Verbatims and the TDK failed, whereas the Verbatims worked flawlessly before, and the Ridatas are the only ones the burner seems to like.

 

I have nothing else open during the burn process. Not even my browser. I can go and start ending processes through Task Manager, but that seems a bit much every time I need to burn a DVD, no?

 

Okay, I've ended a whole bunch of processes that I thought might interfere with the burning process (mostly just things like Nero Home service - even though that service isn't installed, and a bunch of Logitech services for my webcam). Still no luck.

Verbatim 16x DVD+R (which always worked) - PMA error
Verbatim LightScribe DVD+R (always worked) - PMA error
TDK 16x DVD+R (never tried them) - PMA error
Ridata 8x (never tried them before yesterday) - works

Tried burning at all speeds ranging from 20x, 18x, 16x, and 8x. Results are the same each time.

 

Try burning the same files with ImgBurn.

 

try turning on your DMA again.

http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/check_set_dma_page1.html

after searching the forums, other people mentioning defragging the hard drive in the computer as well. Have you defragged recently?

 

DMA is on. It's a known issue that with the nVidia chipsets it falsely reports it as being off in Nero. I can verify that in Windows. I have not tried defragging, though. I could give that a shot.

 

Well I gave defragging a shot - no luck. Same exact results as before. This issue is baffling me! For the life of me, I can't figure out what's changed.

 

Did you try image burn like it was suggested? With you running vista before the burn turn of the slide bar and the aero theme what ever its called then anything down by the clock right click each 1 and select close “exit” then burn at 8x

 

I tried ImageBurn and got some unusual results. I've never used it, so maybe I did something wrong, but I opened the image, set it to burn, and I guess Verify is set by default. Well I got the failure again, but when ImageBurn was done verifying, it said verify successful. Does that make any sense?

 

Hmmm, Done everything that i can think of, perhaps all that is left is to E-mail Nero and ask their opinion or help. I don't think that uninstalling/reinstalling would help, would it?

 

I could try uninstalling it, but I think you're right - I don't think it would make a difference. Someone suggested uninstalling the nVidia SMBUS drivers. Not a terrible idea, as they usually suck. I do recall having some other issue with my burner and that's why I installed them to begin with, though. :\

 

Is this a new Dell pc with SATA drives? Are you using AnyDVD too?

Take the failed disc from Nero put it in your drive and open ImgBurn and select tools>Drive(where disc is)>Close>Disc, Make sure to turn AnyDVD off if you are using it and any other dvd programs. And see if ImgBurn can close the disc. I was having this problem with a new Dell pc some months back. AnyDVD would not let nero close the disc. The work around is rip the disc with Anydvd and disable AnyDVD after rip, and open the files in nero and run as usual. Nero should be able to close disc. All this assumes you're using AnyDVD. Your Verbatim media is not the problem.

 

I don't have AnyDVD and it's not a new Dell. I built this machine myself. It's an EVGA 750i FTW motherboard, a Q6600 Core2Quad CPU, 4G of OCZ Reaper HPC Edition RAM, 2x Samsung F1 Spinpoint 750G drives in RAID 0, 2x8800 GTS 512 (G92), and the Samsung SH-203N burner.

I have tried 4 types of media. Only one was successful, no errors. I would like to think it's not the Verbatim's that's the problem, but if it works on the Ridata's, then wouldn't that mean it's the media? I've used the Verbatim's before with no problem, so normally I'd say it's not the media, but like I said, the Ridata's do work with no PMA error.

I will try that ImageBurn trick, though I'm not using anything other than Nero.

 

On my Asus motherboard it was nvida 2 chipset I think been a wile I had trouble with the nvida chipset drivers so might be worth you uninstalling them and just use the windows base drivers just go in device manager and under atapi controllers just uninstall them and reboot and it should load the windows drivers look in control panel first and see if you’ve got the option to uninstall nvida drivers you should have I did but I still used both options to get rid of the nvida drivers worth a shot

 

I tried uninstalling the drivers via Control Panel and it didn't seem to work. All it seemed to do was uninstall the ethernet drivers. When I looked under device manager at the storage controllers, they still said nVidia for the driver manufacturer. Then I tried Driver Cleaner Pro and it didn't work either. I can't seem to go to standard MS drivers!