NEC3540 does not recognise burnt -media

Hi All
I have a problem with my 3540a which has been going on now for about a month,the drive is about 3 months old, which is it will not recognise a minus disc that has anything written on it, should this be dvd or a game, it keeps telling me i have inserted a blank disc. It will however recognise pressed dvd's, games (ps2etc) +rw and -rw it has no problems with cdr/rw, i dont currently have a +r disc to try. This also happens with discs that have been burnt on another drive so i dont think its the software im using, nero and dvd decrypter, any minus discs i have burnt using these programmes play fine. I have updated to the latest firmware 1.w8 but this still hasnt helped.
Any help greatly appreciated

 

That is truly odd. And you've tried a couple of brands of dvd-r media and same thing?

 

Hi
Yes this is all brands of -discs from ritek's down to the cheapest, it still doesnt recognise them, i agree it is very odd

 

Firmware controls the read/info of the Burner and if it worked before, what changed in the last month?

 

Hi
As far as i can remember the problem started when i installed anydvd to copy 1 movie i have since uninstalled it. When i insert a burnt - disc and go into my computer the disc icon is visable on that drive, however when i try to explore the disc nothing is in it. I am using nero version 66018, if i try to do a disc copy with nero it gives me an error message " can not copy this disc to dvd" if i try using nero showtime to play the disc it will not play. If i burn a dvd using nero or an iso using dvd decrypter and then reinsert it it comes up as blank. Some times it will bring up the windows auto run box other times it doesnt. I have tried using dvd decrypter 3.5.2.0 and 3.5.4.0 and other rippers but they dont see the disc either

 

You can always reset the drivers for your optical media by doing the same thing as resetting them to DMA mode as shown in the thread that the link in my sig would take you to. Try that and see what happens.

 

Hi
The link is dead

 

Nope, the link is still alive. Try to click on it more then once. I just did.

Under DEVICE MANAGER, open IDE ATA/ATAPI CONTROLLERS.
On the PRIMARY and SECONDARY IDE CHANNELS, open up their PROPERTIES display.
In PROPERTIES click on the ADVANCED SETTINGS tab.
Make sure that TRANSFER MODES is set to DMA IF AVAILABLE. and not PIO.

Click on uninstall, then reboot your machine so that Windows can find them again and load the drivers back to they way they were.

 

Hi
I tried uninstalling as you said, udma was and still is being used but still no joy recognising the disc. In the primary channels it is udma mode 5 and secondry channel is udma mode 2 on device 0 and mode 3 on device 1, if any of this info helps
*edit*
I tried 10 different discs some it would recognise once but when i tried them again it wouldnt

 

berty642

Media is usually the issue but in your case, if you have tried many media brands and burns and no success, then it just my be a failing DVD drive.

 

Hi
I think your right the drive is failing, they arent expensive to replace but i would have liked longer than 3 months from it, this is the second nec drive ive had fail the first a 2500 lasted 18 months which wasnt bad. But i think i will stay clear of them in the future can you reccomend a good replacement, the pioneer 110d is under £30 are they reliable?

 

I cannot talk more highly of any drive then the BenQ1640. There are none around now but the BenQ1650 is just about to come out and the BenQ1655 with light scribe is out and only $55 on Newegg.com. They can do anything, near perfect burns, and can bitsett as well.