There are two common causes for power calibration errors. Low Quality Media At the start of each burn the drive will burn to a small section the the disc to adjust the laser power for the media being used. Low quality media is inconsistent and will frequently give hit or miss results during the power calibration. AN32, CMC and Moser Baer are common low quality media. Keep in mind that many of the brands of media aren't actually made by the company selling them. To find out who actually manufactured the media you can use DVD Identifier. http://dvd.identifier.cdfreaks.com/ Some of the best makes of media to try are Ritek G04/G05, Verbatim Metal AZO, Maxell and Taiyo Yuden. The only recourse for power calibration errors with low quality media is to update the firmware for your drive and hope it works. Here's a link to the best firmware page to be found: http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php If you've never flashed a drive before I highly suggest checking out the forums there and read up on the process before attemting anything. Your Burner Is Dying This one is self-explanatory. If you're using quality media, your firmware is up to date and you're still recieving power calibration errors then your old drive is dying or your new drive is most likely defective.
i burned a couple dvd's on cheaper no name media but it worked fine !! now my nec dv 2500A seems slow on startup the light hangs and all programs freeze until i free the drive and my problem is i have Burned maybe 30 dvds without failure with 4 diff kinds and brands of media dvd +R -r and dvd-rw's. i have a nec dv 2500a,, and now thru Nero which was ver 6.028 now upgraded 6.3 i get a power calibration error right as it starts burning !! nothing has been changed except upgrade Nero but does same thing!! burned a cd so i think the drive works ?????????
Just to clarify, everything was fine until until you upgraded Nero and since then you keep getting power calibration errors, correct? Are you running the latest firmware for your drive?
no i upgraded nero to see if that would solve it! its a nec 2500A with the firmware that has always been used 1.06 i saw the firmware page and theres a 1.07 but i dont know how to change it!! it seems the drive light stays on longer when i put a disc in and sometimes it freezes nero!!!
I don't know if this applies to you roryoss, but I have a story about Power Calibration errors that might be helpful to someone who has the same problem I did. I have a Pioneer A06 burner and for a while it was giving me Power Calibration errors when I was using Ritek G04 discs. To make a long story short, I figured out that it only happened when I burned a DVD-R after I had burned a CD-RW. I burned a Memorex CD-RW and then I would put in a DVD-R to burn a DVD-R. It would give the error. If I rebooted after the CD-RW then the DVD-R would burn fine. I went through this for a month before I finally stopped using the CD-RW's and the problem stopped. So if anyone gets the Power Calibration Errors and you're burning different types of media, try only doing one of them until you discover if it's a certain type of media that's causing the error.
that seemed to be part of my problem i still cant transfer files to cdrw but i did get a dvd-r to burn after i burned a cd-r <music> i had burned several several dvd+r but then used a cheaper dvd+Rs and problems started or it cudda been the cdrw's !! i cannot erase or format a dvd rw or a cdrw in either nero <latest version> or dvdinfopro!!!!up until those 2 burns the drive didnt even recognize a disk!! i did upgrade the firmware in the drive to 1.07 from NEC!!!!!!! It starts to format then about 15 seconds later it says completed and ejects the disc!!!!!!!!!
I must disagree with the "only 2 reasons". The third reason is that dust has collected in the unit. Last week I posted a note saying my dvd unit would burn but not recognize. No answers from you all. This week it gave me the power calibration error. I took it out opened it up and using my compressor blew the hell out of it. It works fine now. Now of course I believed what you wrote and ordered a new dvd unit before I tried this. I will keep it on hold till this unit actually dies.
I believe I stated it as "there are two most common causes". I'm sorry you feel slighted by our site whose members all have responsibilities such as jobs and families and come here on their own free time while recieving no monetary compensation. Send complaints to: idontappreciatefreehelp@afterdawn.com
Hey Nephilim, There was no slight towards your words. Don't get in such a huffy. All I was pointing out is that before one assumes it is dead that they open it up and clean it. A point which you did not make. I was trying to be helpful to the readers. I sent the approximate same message to NERO when they gave me there list of 5 reasons. He thanked me for giving him one more suggestion. Calm yourself, Oops
and on another note. Sure I was hoping some feedback. Even a "dunno" would of been fine. I was just surprised that nobody jumped on it and said something. It has been my experience here that people jump on problem. My remarks were more of surprise then anything else. Pioneer didn't reply either, that didn't surprise me. I decided to tackle the issue which I've always done in the past. (Forgive me for wishing that someone might have had a similar issue that got resolved before I started ripping my computer apart) I was bummed that I had to stab at this blindly, but I was satisfied that I solved the mystery. I got an answer and posted it for others to benefit from. Probably a number of these drives that you say are "dying" are only choked up with dust. Finally get out of the baby pool your making the water yellow. In my spare time I gladly fix other peoples mistakes for free in my area whether it is computer, electrical, household, or whatever so go be pissy somewhere else.
Oopsla it's some times hard (or next to impossible) to correctly trouble shoot a malfuntioning drive with out physically seeing the said unit we do the best we can with the info we get.Thats why you should take all advise as it is given as suggestion. _X_X_X_X_X_[small]Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.[/small]
to oopsla....... regarding this issue as the saying goes "the proof is in pudding"if you don't know what your talking about ,don't waste your time and energy typing because the fact that you sit home watching cartoons and getting ideas from the commericals should tell you something.... and big ups my boy red ant......
"Dust can be a factor as well" would've done nicely and stayed on topic with the thread. _X_X_X_X_X_[small] JMLS-166S/Plextor PX-708A/Plextor Premium My Movies! http://www.intervocative.com/dvdcollection.aspx/Rephaim Got Indie? http://cdbaby.com/[/small]
What if you updated from 1.05 firmware to 1.18 firmware for a Pioneer 107D and then the power claibration errors start? I was burning at 6x on Princo's with 1.05 but with 1.18 i wanted to test if I could go to 8x and got calibration errors 17% in both times while burning a 4000mb dvd iso.
Red Ant, My comments were only meant to ADD to what should be looked at when a unit is failing. Last thing I ever want to do do is throw away a good unit. I'd think everyone would agree with that. Solo, I checked out other comments you have made on the board. You are absolutely useless. Oopsla
I have a pioneer AO6 drive and I'm having the power calibration issue. First the drive wouldn't recognize certain games. Burnout 3 and Dynasty Warriors 4 empires ,so far, to be exact. Now like 2 weeks after I find out some games won't even read on the drive I get that error message. I just got home and was able to burn an image and then when I tried to burn the same image again and I got the power calibration error. I'm using Ritek G4 trying to burn at 4x. Could it be dust becasue I must admit that since I got it (back when 4x was all the rage) I have used it more then any drive Ive ever owned B4 it.