PHILIPS DVD+-RW DVD8631

Sorry to hear that you are experiencing problems with the Philips DVD8631. I was getting good results with DVD-R 8x speed Datasafe media, then suddenly the blank discs were not being burned, although the I was getting a "Successful burn" message. The Philips would then work for another couple of burns and again fail - all using the same media. I also downloaded the update for the drive, without any further success. I am afraid that the drive is inferior and initially works well before collapsing in a heap. If you are still within warranty get back to Dell asap.
Good luck

 

Thanks for reply,

I am using datawrite titanium 16 speed, which burnt at 16 speed in the sony DW-Q30A-B2 until fairly recently.But in this piece of crap only burn at 8 speed!!

I have emailed Dell and await their response don`t fancy spending loads of time on the phone.

Funny all this just being down to problems on DVD media, I have had no problems on CDR media

 

I do wish you luck with Dell Dylan. In my recent past experience with Dell they will try to send you another Philips 8631. Although they promised on the telephone that I would receive a NEC, a Philips 8631 arrived by courier. I refused to install this and spoke to a Dell Manager(ess) and she told me that I would have to accept what Dell sent to me. I refused to accept this and I did eventually receive a NEC. I really think that it is the DVD drive that is at fault, rather than the Media. I have used Verbatim, Datawrite and Datasafe (8x) blank media and all work perfectly.

Good luck

 

Hello all! This is an AWESOME forum! N.1 on Google for Philips DVD8631. Ok, so by reading the posts i updated the firmware to GD30 from the Dell website by a link that was posted. I originally had firmware 9D03.
So my question is, what is the difference between firmware and a driver? My driver is 5.1.2535.0. Can I update this too?

Also is the GD30 upgrade the latest one?
Thank you for all replies!

 

And I forgot to mention that Microsoft is the one providing the driver. Should't it be Philips??
Thanx again for any and all replies!

 

This is the worse burner ever! I've burned about 3 CD's in a year and the thing simply stopped working (won't eject, read, burn, close, nothing!). I call Dell and they tell me sorry, your warranty expired 31 days ago! What a piece of junk. NOw I have to go out and spend more money to replace the junk.

 

I am so sorry to hear of your dilemma with the Philips DVD driver. Such a pity that you are out of warranty.

Dell if you read these Forum letters, please change your choice of DVD drives and replace them with something more reliable. You are losing more future Dell customers by using such mediocre drives. I would not recommend anyone to Dell presently because of the problems I have experienced. What could be a very good system turns bad with the use of inappropriate hardware. Wake Up Dell!!

 

Hey all! First post, I finally registered, after browsing around this site for years. I have a phillips DVD+-RW that just started acting up, so i took your advice and called dell. I dug around and found a dell tech support number that connected me right to their call center in austin. Thought i'd drop it here, incase anyone here didnt want to take their chances arguing with someone who's hard to understand.

1-800-624-9896

there ya go, have fun.

 

Hey All who have been frustrated with this peice of junk 8631! It's my first time here and after reading all the posts regarding this 8631,I just wanted to add my two cents. I bought the dell Dimension 4700 at the beginning of April 2005 so I think the "bad batch" is a little larger than what has been thought.
My house was broke in and robbed of my digital camera and camcorder last summer so I never had the need to record onto DVD until now. I FINALLY saved up enough cash to buy replacement cameras and just last week went to burn some images and learned that my DVD-RW is CRAP! My warranty just expired a few weeks ago too! Talk about sh*tty luck! I am clueless about computers and dont know where to go or what to ask for when it comes to purchasing a new DVD-CD RW drive.
Will any work with this computer or do I need a special type? I just want to get pictures and video onto CD or DVD of my family since the damn robber took all of the tapes of my childrens first moments. I'd like something decent (anything will beat what I have now right?) but I am tight on cash too. I dont know what is an average price to pay for a new DVD-RW drive. If anyone can help me get some answers on where and how to purchase- I would REALLY APPRECIATE IT!!!!! Dell stinks! Shouldnt they have some kind of recall for this kind of problem occuring? Ever since my warranty expired I've had all kinds of strange things happening to my computer as if it is programmed to become faulty after warranty expires. Are those of you having problems with the 8631 drive having any other problems as well? just curious THANKS!!! sorry so long here!

 

hi,

sorry to hear about all this - trouble-shoot first: check disks for any grease or dust, give drive a burst of canned air in case there is dust inside the writer, messing up the laser; check blank media brands, some work better than others; also make sure there is no program/software clash on the pc - is there another burn software on there? is the anti-virus cutting in? is the pc set to 'hibernate' after a certain amount of time - this can put an invisible blocker on all time-consuming projects, such as edit/burning dvd's

i have no faith in any writer over say 18 months, cause the technology and its requirements are changing so fast - this Philips is my fourth writer: i've said goodbye to an Hitachi whilst a Samsung + Sony which were working great 12 months ago can't be used for burning now - it ain't just Philips!

hope some of this helps?

ric

 

hi people just thought id share my dell/philips 8631 experience with people,got my dell dimension 3000 in early july and i was very happy.......until 2 weeks later when my philips cd/dvd drive just stopped reading and burning discs..called dell and after they emailed me loads of troubleshoot sheets they eventually said "o i think you may have a technical problem" so they said they would come in 2 days to look at it........1 WEEK later a big red courier truck came to pick up the computer and i was without it for 3 weeks.....they replaced my drive with........another philips 8631...i didnt really mind then because the machine was under warrenty........months passed and one day the drive decided to just die.........i emailed dell but it seems they are just ignoring me so ill keep trying......im guessing from all the posts that it would take a miracle to fix dis drive.....+++++ can anyone tell me wat drive dell puts in their inspiron 1300's

 

Hello All! Good news (for me anyways)! I talked to the Dell phone technical help and when I told him that I had d/l the latest firmware from the Dell website he told me I had done half his job. Then he had me have Windows recognise the drive again. He told me that he wanted me to reseat the cable to make sure it was not ajar but luckily for me he seemed to forget about it as after he returned on the line from putting me on hold he did not mention anything about it. The most AMAZING thing about this story is that even though the guy I talked to could said he was not allowed to request the brand of drive, I got what I wanted anyways THE NEXT DAY!! The next morning a technician came over to install a NEC DVD ND 3530A!
I am SOOO happy!
On a side note... does anyone know where to get the latest firmware for this drive?
ThanX!

 

One more thing... there seems to be another possible solution to getting the drive to work which i found recently. It seems that it is a software update. I found it too late to try but it might help someone else.
Here's the link:

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_cdrom&message.id=99946

This forum has been extremely helpful to me! I hope this helps contribute to others!

 

I hope I'm not gonna jinx myself for saying this but so far, I'm very happy with my Phillips DVD8701. I tried it with a variety of blank media. Fujifilm -R (TYG02), Verbatim +R and also Verbatim +R DL with not one coaster so far. Probably because I use good blank media. From hearing all the horror stories about the 8631, I'm just happy I bought my Dell after they stopped shipping that piece of junk (8631).

 

ok.... here is an update to my Philips 8631!! I bought my Dell XPS last year... it's a year now and I [bold]never, every had any problems that your guys are having with this drive![/bold]My brother has the same computer as I do and I found out that the drives made before April of 2005 must have had a defect in them. My philips 8631 has produced 1200 DVDs as of this date and here is a scan of the quality of one of them:
quality score of 99.80% and notice the firmware is GD30 and it's been great since day one April 30,2005!

 

I looked in my add remove page for Sonic DLA as eyesoffme suggested, but it wasn't there. There was however "Sonic myDVD". Are they the same? I'm not very computer literate, and afraid to do things that I'm not familiar with, for fear of screwing up my computer. My problem sounds prevelent. I installed Roxio 8, put together a photo slide show,with music,and previewed it. All went well till I clicked on Burn. Then I got an error message,"80045018 Error while opening project current task aborting". I used the DVD blanks that came with the program. Any ideas,anybody??? Dell 8300, Phillips DVD+RWDVD8701 Version: 5D24, Serial# 594d50303239353230373

George

 

Sonic DLA is not the same as Sonic MyDVD. DLA is packet writing software like N-ero InCD and Roxio Drag to Disc. None of these should ever reside on anyone's computer.

For your problems with Roxio, go to their forums and post the troubles that you are experiencing.

 

a ton of us had problems with roxio 8 when we tested it.....heres a article to explain more..it is now gone..it was so bad i had to go back to a ghost image..

Trusted Reviews blasts Roxio 8 'package is fatally flawed'
Posted by Dan Bell on 13 May 2006 - 15:29 - Source: Trusted Reviews

This is odd. The last version of this recording software, Roxio 7, was a very good product and has been given glowing reviews just about everywhere you can look. So, now we have have Roxio 8, certainly, it ought to be even better than ever, with maybe just a kink or two, right? Well, this gentleman at Trusted Reviews says, that even though the software recording suite is packed with features, it's riddled with bugs!

Unfortunately, though packed with features, this package is fatally flawed. The central core, for instance, is littered with irritating problems and bugs. It doesn’t seem able to handle TIFF images correctly – the thumbnails come out scrambled. It’s one hell of a resource hog. Just flicking between the different views for standard PC folders, media organiser and custom albums can take a few seconds, and there’s a small delay when carrying out even simple tasks such as expanding folders in the tree view. And sometimes the file dialog just refuses to work.

The problems don’t end there. Though easy to use, My DVD Express is about as flaky as a box of All Bran and falls over at a moment’s notice, especially when attempting to preview your carefully crafted DVD movie and slide show compilations. And the rest of the suite is similarly afflicted, with applications regularly throwing error messages, freezing up, shutting down and generally causing frustration and disruption.

Well, don't candy coat it, tell us how you feel! This is very odd indeed and what is even more surprising, is that the issues could not be worked out prior to the release of this review. One has to wonder what is going on. In the meantime, we should watch to see if any updates come along to address the issues mentioned or if other review sites concur with this one. For those that wish to read more, you can visit this link and read the article in it's entirety.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13416

read the article here
http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=2857

 

Thanks for the info. Is there any software out there that does what it is suposed to do. Roxie 8 would be great if only it worked. Maybe another brand that works better?

George

 

this whole thread is about PHILIPS DVD+-RW DVD8631 well to fix any problems update the firmware to gd30 and all problems solved