Announcements

Hello, and welcome to the CD Freaks Optical Drive forums!

We hope that you will find these forums to be helpful and informative. To help make these forums better for everyone, we ask that you please follow these guidelines:

1. Please do read the CD Freaks general forum rules.
    
2. Please do look around to see if the question, problem, or topic that you wish to post about has already been addressed.
   • If you have a question about a DVD-Writer, please read the F.A.Q. for PC DVD-Writers first.
   • If you have a problem with a DVD-Writer, please read this troubleshooting guide first. (Although it is a NEC troubleshooting guide, the troubleshooting procedures outlined in this guide are applicable for all DVD-writers.)
   • Please read the stickied threads at the top of the forums.
   • Please search the forums to see if your question has already been answered.
    
3. Please do write informative thread titles when starting new threads. Titles like "help me" are not very informative, whereas titles like "my ABC-1234 drive has difficulty burning XYZ media" are more informative, and will generally elicit a faster response from people.
    
4. Please do provide as much information as possible when posting about a problem. This will allow forum members to track down your problem much more quickly.
   • If you have problems with burning DVDs, please provide the exact media code.
   • If you have problems with burning DVDs and your drive supports disc quality scanning, please attach a scan to your post. (instructions)
   • It is often helpful to provide a Nero InfoTool report. (Nero InfoTool can be downloaded separately as freeware if you do not have Nero.) (Click the diskette button at the top of InfoTool to save the report to a text file, and then copy-and-paste the report into your post, enclosed within [CODE][/CODE] tags.)
    
5. Please do not private-message (PM) any of the forum moderators to ask for help. If you need help, post it in the forum. That way, if someone else has the same question or problem, they could see your question as well as any responses to your question that have been posted. You should PM the moderators only for private matters that are not suitable for the forum or for administrative matters (e.g., asking for a post to be moved).
    
6. Please do post on-topic. Do not be offended if your thread or post gets moved to another forum; it is only because we want all the information to be easily found by visitors.
   • General optical drive posts that are not specific to a particular manufacturer should go in the general Optical Drives Forum and not one of its manufacturer-specific sub-forums. For example, posts comparing a NEC to a BenQ should go into the general forum and not in the NEC or BenQ forums because it deals with more than one drive type and is thus not specific to either NEC or BenQ.
   • Software problems and questions should go in one of the Software-Related Forums, and posts about media testing/identification software (such as Nero CD-DVD Speed) should go into the Media Testing/Identifying Software Forum.
   • Posts about recordable media should go in the Media Forum.
   • Posts about set-top video recorders should go in the Stand Alone Devices & Home Entertainment Forum.
    
7. Please do take responsibility for what you do. If you "mod" (unofficially modify) your optical drive (e.g., loading an unofficial region-free firmware), you are technically voiding your warranty, because while such things may be fun and might improve performance, they are not sanctioned by the manufacturer. If you damaged your drive by "modding" it, you should accept the consequences and do not send the drive in for a replacement, as that is unfair to the manufacturer and raises the costs for the rest of us.

Thank you, and we hope that you will enjoy your visit to the CD Freaks Optical Drive forums!