Slimtype DVDRW SOSW-833S Media Problems

Try downloading latest firmware vs04 and saving this to file, then download omnipatcher from http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=97590 . Once omnipatcher is installed run it and load the new vs04 firmware into it and edit the relevant settings relating to write speeds of your particular brand of dvd media, then all should be fine.

If you are unsure of the code for any particular brand of dvd try running nero test drive utility and this will tell you the media code relevant to the disc you have in your drive.

Hope this helps.

 

Hello biojam, welcome in our club!!!
i not understand if many model notbook from acer have this problem why not "many persons speak of this" ???

i am from quebec canada. if a problem occurs in all contrys, why it was not documented??? go to google and search for
acer slow dvd burn
and you find our tread?? why not more persons?


Does your is slow like mine... if i burn at 2x it take 30 minutes (normal for 2x), if i try do burn at higher speed it down to 0.7 and take more than one hour...

Serge

 

I can now burn data files (photos, programs etc) at a good speed but burning a dvd backup which usually takes around 20 to 30 minutes on my desktop has just taken 3 hours!!! on my acer laptop.

Wonder if it is the fact that both the hard drive and dvd burner are on the same ide channel??, surely this is not a good idea, or is it just a poor burner from Liteon??, looking at liteon website this burner doesn't seem to have much information written about it, just the fact it is for Japanese markets only....seems to be a poor inferior drive to me, Hope we can resolve this problem.

Bobnett

 

for me upgrade firmware do noting,
i test all firmware that i found:
VRS2 (stock)
VRS3
VS04
upgrade the ata controler driver form intel, no change...

in this firmware, the disk i use is "suppose" to be at 8x
TTH02 -52 [ 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x ]
MCC 02RG20 -52 [ 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x ]

if you have good result, please post it.

like biojam say "i am pretty sure this MUST be a problem of ACER"
i do not think it was a burnuer problem but a ACER problem...
but i will be very happy if some one find a solution...

 

Hi everyone, Just joined the forum.

Two days ago I took my ACER Aspire 1654WLMi (which was 5 days old), back to comet after being instructed to do so by ACER technical support, the guy told me on the phone that the Philips SDVD8441 that came with it was faulty and they knew that 1% of these DVD RW drives had a fault!!!

Anyhow, I picked up the new Notebook, same model today, this one has the "Slimtype DVDRW SOSW-833S" drive instead. I burned the Factory recovery DVD on a Mitsubishi 4x DVD+RW and it took only 8mins 11secs to complete the burn, the DVD is readable on my Notebook and my desktop, the firmware revision of the drive is VRS2. I believe that there may be burning problems in your notebooks because of the DMA mode being set at 2, my desktop PC has a DMA Mode 4 set for my Empress 16x DVD RW DL drive, Acer reacon that the lower DMA setting helps to guarantee a successful burn. Thing is DMA mode setting is not permissable in BIOS.

I will try various types of DVD -R/+R discs and report back with my findings.

Thanks for reading.

 

Hi everybody.
So. After a very fast and funny talk with the technician on the acer-hotline a guy came to pick it up. the technician was pretty unsure about what he is saying. Obviously i know more about comps than he does. Well....
Now I am waiting for the statement. I will update you on the latest info ASAP. Wish you luck guys.

btw. my burner was a philips...

 

Hey guys...Acer is really p*ssing me off!!
I likewise have an Acer 3613wlmi with a Philips sdvd8441 burner. My burns take in the neighbourhood of 2-3 hours for either iso or vob files. I initially called Acer Support who sent me to the nearest service depot and swapped out a new replacement drive. Same problem.
Called Acer Support again, got a female who insisted that she has a dvd burner on her home computer and 2 hours is NORMAL...WHAT? I told her she was basically insane with which she changed her tactic and said she has never encountered this problem in the 4 MONTHS she's been working there...SHEESH!!! I realized I was wasting my breath and decided to do a fresh reinstall of the system ...same problem. I even tried another version of Windows, but Windows 2K Pro is not compatible with this notebook....GAWWWD! Called Acer (lack of)Support once again, they want to swap out the drive AGAIN with the same model and refused my request for a different model of drive saying that they can only install the original part number (talk about Anal). In my research I have found that Windows XP SP2 has caused all sorts of problems around the buffer file management, which in turn causes significant slowdowns in performance. However there is no way to rollback to SP1. I use a USB external LG 16x burner and it writes flawlessly at all speeds every time. So it appears to be an IDE bus/dvd drive/buffer underrun problem which does not affect the USB port. Nero's drive check shows a "million" sync errors which definitely causes bad burns. So what.s the bottom line here??? I HAVE NO F***ING IDEA!!!!!

 

Hey...I think I finally figured it out. After going to my local electronics superstore and checking out various brands of laptops (ie. HP,Toshiba,Gateway and a few others) I found that all of them, with the exception of Acer has two IDE buses, a primary AND secondary channel. Acer in their infinite wisdom and poor design engineering decided to institute a single IDE primary channel and put the hard disk drive (HDD) as the master and the dvd writer as the slave. Well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that you can't have massive high speed data read and write transfer going on using the same channel without perfomance degradation and buffer issues. That is why it is paramount that the HDD be a master on the primary bus and the dvd writer be the master on the secondary bus. Unfortunately, I don't think there is a workaround for thisproblem...no media change, no dvd drive change, no amount of HDD defragging or software reinstallation. That is why also the USB burner works flawlessly...because it is not on the same bus as the HDD. I will be talking to the geniuses at ACER once again to see how they BS their way out of this one!!!

 

Hi guys, as I said in my first post i would get back to you with my findings regarding burn success with my Acer AS1654WLMi and the DVDRW SOSW-833S. As some of you have said in this thread, you are having unsuccessful burns with DVD R(+-), it's strange, i am getting 100% perfect burns on DVD+RW discs at 4x taking around 11 mins to backup a DVD, but although it burns my DVD+R at 4x and takes the same time around 11 mins, the DVD goes blocky on my stand alone DVD Player and on the notebook. I have plenty DVD+RW discs, and think it may be brand compatability issues here, well in my case anyway.

Will keep trying other brands and report back soon.

Thanks guys, good luck.

 

Hi people!

I've been having the same damd problem with my SOSW-833s drive. I realy hope someone figures out what the hell is going on. I've searched the whole net and haven't found any help.
I have made a small list of media that have worked and posted them here
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdmedia.p...&searchdvdplayer=&search=Search+or+List+Media
i hope it helps.

 

Hi all.

I reported a problem with the Acer Travelmate Laptop Slimtype SOSW-833S VRS3 optical drive a few weeks ago. It was burning okay all media except CD-RW using NTI FileCD trying to format to UDF or ISO 9660, NTI DataCD or WinXP software. This fault was probably from new on a 6 month old laptop, but not detected by me until now.

I reloaded the default recovery a few times, checked LiteOn web site to download their Media compatible list. What I did notice on the log file of a failed write (but ghost written CD-RW), was that it identified the CD-RW media as a DVD ROM type, all other types of media were identified correctly and writing was successful to them. So it would be worth checking the log file to see if you have any discrepancies.

I have returned the laptop to Acer Service Repair (Plymouth UK), and they report a bad optical drive which has been replaced. I have yet to receive the laptop back to test the new drive, but will certainly post here when I have received and tested it.

Someone had a broblem with blocking when playing back a DVD or CD on the DVD player, I have found this problem also with some media, to get over it I recorded at the slowest speed possible, it may be to do with the quality of the media or laser going soft.

Good Luck you guys, I know how frustrating it is when these things don't work as they should do.

Regards Terry

 

Hi Guys!
My burner is finally working. I´ve sent the Notebook back to acer service center. They returned it within 4 days. The official statement says that there was a physical problem with the the old burner. so they exchanged it for a new one (same type) and now everything works.
so, wish you luck.
bye

 

Hi all.

I reported a problem with the Acer Travelmate Laptop Slimtype SOSW-833S VRS3 optical drive a few weeks ago. It was burning okay all media except CD-RW using NTI FileCD trying to format to UDF or ISO 9660, NTI DataCD or WinXP software. This fault was probably from new on a 6 month old laptop, but not detected by me until now.

Have now received the laptop from Acer repair services, they fitted a replacement optical drive, SOSW-833S but now VRS2 instead of VRS3.

Have tested all media types and appears to be working okay.

Reading the problems you other guys have, trying all the different types of media and particular the risky downloads of firmware i.e. VRS1, VRS2, VRS3 and VRS4, the only solution appears to be replace the drive.

I would advise returning the PC to factory defaults OS and bundled software, if that doesn't fix the drive, then replace the drive.

If this happens to the laptop again out of warranty, I will go the external drive route. - Regards Terry

 

Hey everyone. I recently purchased the ACER TM4060 with the sosw-833s drive. I have also had no luck. In speakikng with tech support they asked that I uninstall the NTI software as it is not compatible withother burning software such as NERO. Most of you talk about the firmware. Can you gude me as to where I can find that? Thanks for all the information.

 

Hi,

You will find the Firmware version at, Control panel,System, Hardware, Device Manager, Highlight DVD/CD Drives, click Slimtype,select Details, Highlight Slimtype, you should see the Firmware Version at the end of the drive description. Regards Terry

 

Thanks Terry. Can youtell me where I can find the newest version available for download? Thanks again.
Roger

By the way, I tried to backup a recent movie and it seemed that all worked fine other than the fact that my regular dvd player will not play the movie but my computer does. I am still looking for a solution. Media used was maxell dvd-r.

 

Just returned my Acer Aspire 1642 laptop to Comet after calling Acer support. Acer explained to me that this is an old model with an old dvd writer, also told Acer of a boot up problem with my laptop (taking around 10 to 15 minutes to boot up....Norton antivirus removed). Acer advised me to return my laptop to comet has it was just 28 days since purchase they would give me a full refund or choose another laptop.

I chose another laptop after checking various ones to make sure it had 2 ide channels instead of Acer one channel set up. Also looked for a decent dvd writer...Pioneer etc. Finally chose a Toshiba Satellite M70 with 2 ide channels and a Pioneer dvd drive.

Put my new Toshiba to the test and backed up a few dvd movies using Datawrite 8x dvd-r, philips 8x dvd+r, datasafe 8x dvd-r and some other dvdrw and all work fine taking around 20 minutes with the 8x media, the drive in the Toshiba also writes dvd ram.

I don't know what the problem with the Acer laptops is, maybe it is the single ide channel problem or firmware but I can really tell the difference with the Toshiba....MUCH BETTER.

 

As I stated earlier, I had my DVD drive replaced and still experienced the same problem with lengthly burns. A buddy of mine has an HP notebook computer with 2 IDE channels and he can't get his burner to work above 2.4X either (His burner is on 2nd master) so there goes that theory. I have given up hoping that ACER will solve the problem. I am also P.O'd that ACER formatted the HDD in FAT32 rather than NTFS 'cause now I can't work with video files greater than 4 gigs (about 1 hour.) So much for transferring my home VHS tapes to DVD. I would have to purchase a copy of Windows XP to reformat the drive and download all of the drivers separately as the bundled software that came with the laptop allows you no latitude of installation/configuration.

 

I was also infuriated bt the Fat32 issue. Luckily however I had a copy of windows and reformatted to ntfs.

When you loaded up the laptop for the first time did it offer you the chance to backup your drivers on 4 cds? I did that on mine and was able to use the disks to install all of the drivers onto the newly formatted hard disk. That could be an option for you.

If all else fails there are programs that will convert your hard drive to ntfs without the need to format. A quick search on the internet and you should find some.

Here is a link that could help. Although I have not tried this myself so it is at your own risk.

http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php

 

If you do not have the windows cd you can convert to NTFS by using the convert.exe method. Here are the instructions taken directly from Microsoft support. You can get more information about converting on the support website of microsft.com. The article number is 214579:
I have not tried burning any dvd's since converting.

To convert a FAT partition to NTFS, perform the following steps.
1. Click Start, click Programs, and then click Command Prompt. (start, run, cmd)
2. At the command prompt, type CONVERT [driveletter]: /FS:NTFS.
3. Convert.exe will attempt to convert the partition to NTFS.

By the way, you CAN convert without reformatting the hard drive.