PHILIPS DVD+-RW DVD8631

My son has a Dell Inspiron 4100(?) that he bought in May 04. His came with a NEC burner (think it is a 2100A) and it stopped burning this weekend. He was supposed to call Dell support today and see about replacing it. It would be his luck that his NEC would be replaced with the Phillips that everyone else is having trouble with. I told him when he calls to insist that they replace it with an NEC.

 

Hi there,

When you call Dell Tech Support, ask them if they are still shipping that NEC-2100 model, else, what model replaces it ?

Tell them you know Dell has NEC-3450A and NEC-3530A drives.

Just make sure it's NOT a Philips DVD8631, because you've heard so much horror on the Dell Support Forum, you strongly wish NOT to receive that drive. (Philips DVD8631).

I have no idea what are the specs of the NEC-2100 but they usually will replace with an identical support, meaning

Does it support Dual Layer, is it a 8x or a 16x burner etc...

Good luck, and keep us posted here, and or on http://support.dell.com
in the CD/DVD Forum !

 

Sorry for the late reply -- working out of town for a couple of days.

Not sure the burning spped and if it DL or not. Going over to my son's house tomorrow and will check. Will post here if we learn anything.

 

I just bought a Dell Dimension 3000. It has the Philips DVD8631 drive. I have not been able to burn a DVD+R disc yet, using 2 different brands of media(aka coasters!) I can write to +RW discs.
I called Dell and the're sending a new drive out. I then discovered this forum so I called back Dell to request the NEC drive. Their tech support refused to send anything other than the Philips drive. Very frustrated and disappointed with Dell. Will probably return computer if I experience same problems with replacement drive. I'd really like to bill Dell for my numerous hours spent trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and for the numerous coasters I made.

 

Ye Gods! I did a google on the Philips DVD8631, and hit this forum. I'm trying to sort a problem on my Mum's HP Pavilion t820a machine. This thing is just 2 months old, and the drive is toast! HP won't come to the party until I reformat the HD, and reinstall XP. Who are they kidding?!! After reading all this, maybe I'll just replace the drive and tell 'em to stick their warranty. Any thoughts?

 

Hi mad4max, Welcome to Afterdawn!

I would just change it out with a nice 16X double layer drive. I like Pioneer and Sony, there are lots of good drives out there... this is just not one of them.

I'm not sure if changing an optical drive voids the warranty. You probably don't want to loose the warranty so you could call HP and find out.
Maybe you could have HP change the drive to retain the warranty.

 

Thanks fasfrank.After the phone call I just had with HP, I'm not inclined to have HP do antyyhing. As fo voiding the warranty! What good is it if you have to do a "system Recovery" anytime something goes wrong?? I just thank whatever deity Ican think of that this POS is not mine. It might be sacrelogious to say this here, nut this is being typed on a G4 Mac

 

New question. Could my problems be related to "illegal" copying of DVD'?. I don't consider backing up my expensive movie collection illegal, but I guess the vendors have other ideas. I use DVD Shrink, and DVD Fab for this. Is it true that copying DVD's can 'trash' the drive, or the system? As I said in my last post, I generally use a Mac, nad have had no such issues on that platform, so I am doubtful.

 

No, it won't hurt your drives or PC at all. Your computer can display the contents of a DVD so you can watch it on your monitor, encrypted or not.
As far as burning goes, the movie you are burning will have the same file structure as a home movie being burned to a DVD. The ripping program takes care of that by removing the encryption and re-sorting the files so they are DVD-Video compliant.

 

I burned one disk and my DVD died -- trying to do my own troubleshooting before I called Dell I typed in Philips DVD8631 and low and behold this site was the number one hit on google. Clearly there is something wrong with the drive, so I called Dell and went through all the troubleshooting tasks, of course there was no enlightenment. They are going to send me a new drive; I asked for the NEC drive but was told he was authorized to replace part for part; I would need to escalate the issue in order to get a different part. I use the drive to back up data and I have a working CD RW so I didn't escalate the issue. I'll post back here later next week to let you know what I received and if it worked. Thank you all for taking the time to post these messages -- it really helps.

 

I received my new drive from Dell, the same Philips model. So far so good, it actually works.

 

Best of luck, drumerd. I trashed mine. Installed benq instead.Voided warranty in the process, but who cares. It was useless anyway (HP). Machine working fine.

 

Hi I wish to thank those who have suffered before me..I too have a new dell 8400 with the dreaded Philip dvd8631..I have tried numerous software to burn dvds..Most of the time I get the first one done without too much trouble but when I tried to do another dvd it usually crashes. After reading this thread I see I am not alone and now know I am not at fault..I have wasted many blank dvds and numerous hours...Dell must know of something they got me to go to their site and flash the dvdburner....That didn't help so I will get on them tomorrow.

 

If you are having trouble getting dell to help, you can try this solution. I have 2 of the Philips 8631 Dvd+-RW drives. I found that the dvd8631 is very similar to the Benq 1620. So I cross-flashed both of my drives to the Benq 1620 - B7P9 firmware. Now everything works great! You need to use the windwflash tool.

I got the flash tool and the .cvt's from the unofficial BenQ website (you need WinRAR to extract the .cvt).

http://dvdpro.club.st/firmware/BENQ_FW.htm

CraZyDew

 

Just to keep you all updated, my Philips replacement drive doesn't burn DVDs anymore.

 

I flashed my drive with the benq b7p9 firmware and it didn't make a difference. At this point I sent an email to Dell requesting money back for the 2 dvd drives I bought. This has been a miserable experience. Dell support SUCKS.

 

I mentioned to my Dell representative on sunday night by email that I had heard about other problems thanks to this posting and on Tuesday the repair guy showed up with a new NEC dvd burner to replace the philips 8631..I must say that Dell support has been wonderfull both times that I have had a problem. The Nec seems to work great...I have been able to burn without a problem.

 

To follow up on earlier posting. I received my drive today and this is what was on the label: Manufactured March 2005, H/W rev. 02 F/W rev: CD21. Another label read: made in malaysia REV A00. The drive is working, but so was the first one for about a week.

 

After being on the chat line with Dell User Support for well over an hour, they determined that there was a problem with the burner (no kidding). This burner would read DVD-R & DVD-RW already burned, but would not recognize blank DVD+R discs. Dell wanted to replace it with another Philips, but I was quite adament that I did not want another Philips and I asked them how many times would they replace the Philips before they considered the NEC that I wanted, they gave in and are sending the NEC. Since this system is less than 2 months old, they're also sending out a tech to install it! Be insistent!!! They will replace it with what you want!