Not at all bd. I've installed more os' than I care to think about for myself, friends and at work. I'm dual booting Win2K and XP on one of my pc right now. Installing isn't too much different from ...reinstalling, is it? Anyway, I'm glad to hear you have confidence in reinstalling your os. Maybe you'll get to do it again soon.
Well the trader had ran out of sonys. He gave me something else (you can guess the closest competitor), which when plugged in worked immediately and perfectly. I've been burning my back up data since yesterday- (time for a reformat)... Thanks to mynutts and barn.door for your encouragement and I'm sorry we didn't find a solution or even if there was a mysterious "faulty batch" or even just a bad drive...
hi just to let poeple know THANKS A MILLION !!, after reading the two main largeish posts this one and the one that theres a link from this thread,i upgraded to 2.0f BUT still could not burn on my datawrite reds 4x nor bigpockets 4x, i was going to upgrade to the lite-on firmware but instead i found today that there was a new 2.0g firmware which after installing on a DRU500A {converted from DWU10A} I can now burn at 4x on these cheap media discs...then after realising that this new firmware actually works i have now upgraded my REAL DRU500AX and now that burns everything too, thanks once again.... 'forums are the mutz nutz for solving problems'
Well.... I have XP Pro, DW-U10A 1.1d. Fresh install of OS just before I installed the drive. Roxio 6, Nero 6, DVD Decrypter, DVD MF2.0, DVD-Lab 1.3 CloneCD 4.2.0.2. Bulkpaq 4x DVD-R (Tango). No problems. All burnt at 4x no coasters. 2 months pass of trouble free burnin on various media at 4x... As I use CloneCD, me finks that CloneDVD would be a good choice for backing up those 'real DVDs' for my mate. Installed latest Clone DVD ... [bold]BANG!![/bold] loadsa costers, even with Nero 6.0.015 max write = 4% before only suitable for putting coffee mug on.! Uninstall CloneDVD - no change -reinstall Nero 6 - No change <many unsuccessful changes pass.....> So, Fresh install of XP and all normal non DVD related apps.... Ghost the C: drive. Add Nero.. test... woohoo... back to no probs... add Roxio... good... all the others added..... apart form Clone DVD ... no probs... all 4x dreams. Added CloneDVD (closes eyes) [bold]BANG!![/bold] COASTERS!! Re apply Ghost image... (hehe 10 mins restore) add CloneDVD [bold]BANG!![/bold] COASTERS!! Re apply Ghost image... reapply all DVD Apps apart from the dreaded CoasterDVD - err sorry typo - CloneDVD.. 4x all happy! - spend 5 mins removing all traces of CloneDVD install packages from other drives just in case I get the urge to ever install it again..... Happy times for a couple of months The inevitable happened the other day, I noticed that CloneDVD had significantly updated itself on their site..... Download .... Ghost the C: Drive (once bitten....) install .... [bold]BANG!![/bold] COASTERS!! Stoopid me.. I guess that sorta sorts that one out... I have mates that have updated their firmware, back and forth, reformatted, reinstalled, and guess what... all my mates with probs have installed CloneDVD at some point or other... Those that have not... DW-U10a rocks!!
Hello MrPix, I too have left my drive as the original Sony drw10a and have suffered similar probs as yourself. However, my probs seem to lie with Nero rather than CloneDVD. Can I ask, did you d/l Roxio off the internet and if so where from? as I cant find it. This may be the cure for me, thanx
MrPix, I think Nero conflicts with some other progs, Clone DVD works fine with Roxio easy CD & DVD Creator 6, Roxio packet writes OK with my DW-U10A, and writes DVD's OK with Clone DVD.... Clone CD&DVD are good, stable progs, My DW-U10A is 1.1D, not upgraded
For backing up DVDs, try DVD Shrink. It reads the DVD and lets you choose which items you want to include (i.e. eliminate menus, extras, unneeded audio tracks, etc.) and it will compress the video, if neccessary, to get it to fit on a DVDR. The program is small, easy to use, works great and it's completely free. The author won't even accept donations. DVD Shrink does not burn the backup DVD, it just creased the VIDEO_TS folder then you use your burning program to burn the disc. This is also useful for storing a few movies on your hard drive to watch on the road, etc. If you strip all of the extras you can get the movies down to just a few GB. See http://dvdshrink.info/
Nero Ultra Edition 6 does not work with this drive. I've made 6 coasters since I upgraded to Nero 6 with the drive. When I switched back to Nero 5, no more coasters again.
Thanks for the advice, but as long as I don't use CloneDVD I can use Shrink. DVD2One etc and use Nero to burn... Works for me.... My point was that I have had no probs with media... all my probs came from software conflict!! maybe if ppl can't burn... they do a clean istall and try installing 1 DVD burning app at a time... if they have probs.. then they should be able to pinpoint what is good and what is not.
Like I have stated in this forum weeks ago, both nero and easy cd creator have problems residing with other software apps. Some people have speculated that some of these conflicts are intentional. Easy cd creator had some serious conflicts with XP when that os first came out. So many people have had problems with nero that it's hard to keep track of what version will work with what. I still stand by Stomp RecordNow for most of my burning. In addition, I use DVDDecrypter and DVDShrink to back up my dvd 5's and 9's resp. No problems, no costers. If you see something like this... "stick wi Nero but get a vesion that u and your drives are very comforatable,i use 5.5.10.42 enteprize edition..." then you know something I wrong. My advise to people who are still having problems is to NOT give up and do a clean install, but rather uninstall your burning apps. one by one and try to figure out witch, if any, is causing the problem. If you are already working with a fresh install, then make sure your drive is recognized by the bios and your os correctly before you start installing apps. Make sure it's configured properly, DMA is enabled, and you have the correct aspi layer installed for your os. And when you do start to install apps. install them one at a time and make sure you have no problems or conflicts with other apps.
Woo Hoo 2.0g has solved all my problems... no thanks to the unhelpful response from bigpockets.co.uk, who even though state their disks are 4x compatible with the U10A & 500A were NOT using 1.1d or 2.0f respectively... along comes the firmwarepage & 2.0g Superb.. everything is now rosie with my Sony... 4x no problem.
Yep firmware 2.0g has fixed my problem with speed issues writes DVD-R 4x Ritek g4. I had used the hacked firmware that made it a liton so kept a much better speed for that time period so thanks for that.
Hi, I thought I'd let you guys know about my experience of the Sony DW-U10A since I used this forum as a source of info. Bought mine last week from Ebuyer...went down in price again the following day. I also bought the Bulkpaq Orange 4x DVD-R's with it. Without upgrading the firmware I used NERO 6.0.0.15 to burn a dvd shrunk with DVDShrink.. All was looking fine "Burning at 4x" until I realised that it took 30 mins. The dvd was fine though and played in my PS2 with no problems. I started to read round this forum to look for advice. it seemed that a lot of people had a similar problem to me and it also seemed unresolved for some people. I have now managed to get 4x burning with the Bulkpaq orange DVD-R's and this is how I think I got it to work: - 1)Upgraded Nero 6.0.0.15 to Nero 6.0.0.19 2)Upgraded the firmware to the DRU-500A and then to the latest firmware update 2.0g 3) Manually set the Ultra Buffer in Nero to 80MB 4) Made sure processes were kept down to a minimum e.g disable McAfee's or Norton Anti Virus 5)Make sure that you havent got too many DVD/CD Burning software programs installed. I had Alcohol 120%, Nero, and Clonecd. I uninstalled Alcohol 120% 6) Also used Spybot search and Destroy or Ad-aware 6 to remove unwanted adware that may be taking up CPU time 7) I used DVDShrink to shrink my DVD-9's to DVD-5 8) I then used Nero 6.0.0.19 on DVD-video mode to burn my DVDs. It now burns DVDs at 4X and takes approximately 16 minutes. NB here is my system AMD Athlon 2200XP Mobo MSI KT4V 1GB RAM 120GB HDD Liteon 16X DVD-ROM Liteon 48x CDRW Sony DWU10A (upgraded to DRU500A f/w 2.0g) Radeon 9500 (Note. I did not have the 80pin ide cable, just the standard one) I hope this info helps someone, as you guys helped me out, Cheers, Rudy
I have been having the same problems as Gunsmith earlier in the thread. I bought my DW-U10A from ebuyer.com in the UK, for less than £100 but i've had no luck in burning anything more than a CD! I've tried the update to a 500a with even worse results (now nero 6 (latest patch) just hangs for 40 seconds when i insert a blank then says it can't initialise the drive) In its DW-u10a days it would burn the lead in, then stop, making me a nice coaster. Now in 500a (fw 2.0g and f tried) it does nothing, wont recognise a blank DVD or CD! Its the same now i've taken it back to 1.1c U10A, useless!! Its a fairly clean install of Win2000 and i've removed DVD decryptor too, I'm using Princo printable DVDs to make my coasters! Any ideas before it goes back to Ebuyer? Wit
I think the best idear in your case is to send it back. Having is not write at 4x was a sod but the problem your getting sounds hardware problem to me. Now that the 2.0g firmware seems to have sorted out the issue with 4x burning on dvd-r media i think you should maybe think of getting a replacement or getting another drive altogether.
I am about to update the firmware and have read that DMA should be disabled. I am running in Windows XP, should I just set the Sony to PIO rather than DMA or do I need to do something else?
I didnt bother with either it worked fine for me several times. The first time I turned of DMA but the other times I didnt bother it didnt make any differece this was in win98se and windows 2000 pro.
PWIT, you got rid of the wrong program. Keep DVDDecrypter, get rid of nero. Didn't you read the thread? Didn't you see how many people are having problems with nero? Nero bad, DVDDecrypter good. Nero bad, DVD Shrink good. Nero bad, Stomp RecordNow good. Are you starting to see a pattern here?
