A friend and I both got a Benq DW1640 drive. Mine works fine, but hers gives her a fatal error every time she inserts a disc. Inserting a disc into her Benq DW1640 causes a fatal error, blue screen, after which she has to shut down her computer using the reset button. Once she restarts everything works fine. This happens every time whether it is a blank disc, a disc she has recorded, or a pre-recorded disc. She is running Windows XP on a Dell computer. This has happened since the day she installed the drive. Is it possible that she needs to change the master/slave switch on the drive? Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be? Thank you.
The first thing I would check is all the connections and jumpers. How does she have her pc configured? Is this drive added or swapped out with another drive? If that drive is not the master,then dell usually recommends cable select instead of slave. If her connections look ok and set to slave,then set it to cable select. Vice versa if that drive was set as cable select. Here's my configuration: Primary master: Main Hard drive Primary slave: Second hard drive-slave Secondary Master: Dvd-rom or dvd-rw that is doing the reading Secondary Slave: Dvd-rw drive-for the burning I've had my dvd-rw drives set as master and noticed no difference than slaving them. My backup pc I had to use cable select instead of slave on the secondary channel. Double check those jumpers. Another thing: If that drive came with an IDE ribbon,then it should have been used. Some drives come with the 40 pin/80 wire ribbon which is necessary for dvd-rw drives. 40 pin/40 wire ribbon cable can also cause problems like that. It's hard to visually see the difference.The 80 wire ribbon has thinner wires as apposed to the 40 wire ribbon. Last: If she added this drive and not swapped it out for another drive: Could be not big enough power supply? Dell,like HP probably uses the lowest wattage power supplies that they can get away with.
Saugmon, I am the friend. One thing I want to change in what dkcfarm said is that I can burn discs in this drive. It just won't play a movie disc whether it is an original or one that I burned on that drive. I took it out and checked to see if it was plugged as a slave or cable. It was on the cable, so I changed it to the slave and it still shuts down my computer when I put a movie in it. As I said I can put a blank disc in and burn it ok, just can't put in a burned or original movie in this drive. I guess it really doesn't matter because I have a separate DVD rom drive. I can play movies in that drive. Maybe that's why I can't play movies in the Benq drive????? Thanks for your help.
That Benq 1640 won't play its own backups? Strange,but it does happen. I've got 6 pc dvd-rw drives and no how each of those drives react to all the different backups. First of all,we need some more info: What brand name/format/and speed rate is your blank media? Do you have those backups booktyped to dvd-rom? How fast did you burn them? What is the current firmware version of that 1640? Did you download Q-suite 2.0? The burner drive should be able to play its own backups,which all 6 of mine do.Your drive has a compatability issue since other drives can play them ok. 1) Media quality is the usual culprit. Make sure it is quality media-taiyo yuden/verbatim/ritek/and japanese sony/fuji/and maxell.The crappy media can be harder to read like memosux/teon/playo/imation/HP/TDK/phillips. 2)Could be compatability of the format you are using. Benqs highly favor the plus format and can booktype them to dvd-rom making them more compatable on drives.Once you booktype the plus format,they will be recognized by more pc drives/stand alone players/and game consoles. I don't bother with the dash format anymore because of the superior compatability rate with my booktyped backups from all 3 of my benqs. 3)Burn speed: Benqs will fly with the newer 8x and 16x media. I can get 16x out of sony +1x-8x if I leave my burn setting at max. Also,the high quality verbatim +16x performs better off my benq 1640 at the 8x and 12x burn speed. Slow 2.4x is a big no-no with MCC-004 verbs. 4x is ok,but still scan worse than the 12x backups.With quality media,you may have to increase that burn speed. 4) Paper/sticker labels: Major no-no. 5) Firmware version: This firmware instructs you drive on how to burn your media. For this drive,I updated mine as soon as I installed it. 6) Q-suite 2.0: This is a must have utility. It'll control the overburning of media/set your drive to booktype the plus format to dvd-rom-which is the biggest asset of benq drives/qscan-suppose to be able to scan your backups for errors,but won't work for me/and some other features. You can get that utility here: http://support.benq.com/front/BenqMain.asp?MenuHead=128&ShowType=... If you see a character digging and saying site is down,just ignore and click on drives and locate qsuite 2.0. Also check out the latest firmware update on your drive.This utility is a must if you want to take advantage of the phenomenal compatability rates with your booktyped dvd-rom backups. Booktyping works on dvd+r/+rw/and +r DL blank media.
