Please Help: LG GH22NP20 won\'t read DVD\'s (LG GH-22NP20)

This thread is about the LG GH-22NP20. Click here to see full specs

Please can someone help, as I'm going round the twist with this drive....

I recently purchased an LG GH22NP20 rewriter and installed it in my Windows XP machine, as secondary master, 80 wire cable, Ultra DMA4. Drive is recognised OK in BIOS and by Windows.

Using Nero, I burned a Verbatim DVD-R, and it failed to verify saying "Cannot mount disk" or something like that. Windows and Nero simply won't read the disk...

So I burned a few more of the same type. None of them would read in the LG, yet they read perfectly in a normal domestic DVD player, so it seems to be burning ok.

Thinking I'd got a bad batch of DVD-R's, I tried some Memorex DVD+R, with the same results.

With Sony DVD-RW's it would sometimes read, but most of the time it wouldn't.

It wouldn't read any branded DVD-R's recorded by other people either. The only DVD's it will play are a few unbranded ones and commercially produced things like install disks (are these DVD-ROM?)

It read and wrote CD-R's at up to 52x with no problems at all.

In the end I gave up, and to try and prove whether or not the drive was faulty, I bought another identical model from PcWorld. At first, this one was able to burn and read *all* the discs, but after burning a dozen CD's, this one has also stopped reading DVD's. It still works OK with CD's.

If I stick a previously recorded DVD-R in the drive, windows shows it as "CD Drive (D" alongside a disc icon with "DVD-R" underneath. Clicking on the icon elicits the error dialog "D: is not accessible, Incorrect function".

Help!! :-(

Hi and Welcome!

is there any error indicator in device manager?

Additionally, please get Imgburn, try to burn a disc and post the log file here.

Michael

Hi Michael, thanks for the welcome and the reply.

No there's no error indication, it says the drive is working normally. I've tried updating the driver, but it says I already have the best one. I've even uninstalled the drive, the driver, the IDE channel etc. and started again, but it's just the same.

I will try Imgburn, but as I said, burning discs is not a problem. They burn ok and they play ok in other drives. They just don't read in the LG burner that created them. The only disks it will read are CD's and bona-fide movies with silver-looking reflective surfaces.

Pandora

Ok, problem is now solved, but I thought I'd post the answer here, in case anyone else has the same problem in future..

Both drives worked perfectly in another machine, and the cause of the problem was eventually found to be the power supply!

It seems the power supply output was electrically "dirty", and that interference was upsetting the sensitive signal circuits of the drive when it was trying to read DVD's. A possible reason for why it would read CD's and silver-looking DVD-ROM discs, but not DVD-R/+R/-RW etc. is that the silver surface reflects more laser light and therefore produces a bigger signal which can overcome the interference from the power supply. The DVD-R's etc. reflect less laser and the signal is lost in the noise.

The GH22NP20 seems more prone to the interference than other models, such as the LG GCC-4140B.

Changed the power unit, problem is history.

How did you find out it was your power supply? Did you change the whole unit? or just change the connection from the power supply. I am asking because I am having the exact same problem. But my power supply is really very new. I am not using that my power. Two hds and this dvd.

Hey Pandora, I also bought the same lg dvd/cd writer and I am able to read both cds and dvds, but I can't burn dvds (I tried by using verbatim and sony), while I can burn cds.
In detail, any time I try to burn a dvd after a while (2%) my pc becomes unresponsive and I must hit the power button to get it to boot-up again.

I also have to add that my pc is a bit old (motherboard KT133A,athlon XP 1.6 Ghz) and I recently upgraded it by adding more ram, a new hard disk 7200 rpm and plugging on the usb bus new devices such as printer, bluetooth and another hard disk.
I also have checked the power of my atx power supply and I saw it is just 110 W. So I am wondering myself, if buying a new power supply more powerful I could definitely sort my problem out.

Could you please let me know?
Thanks.

Hi and Welcome!

with such an old computer, there might be several issues than can cause malfuction of your drive:

• Capacitors on motherboard and (or) PSU (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague) are bad.
• PSU not powerful enough (110W isn't very much)or in bad condition.
• Interface compatibility issues (your drive requires an UDMA66 connection and a 80wired IDE cable).

Michael

Hi Michael,

thanks for getting back to me.

To sum up your advice is :
1) Buying a new atx power supply (at least 400 W)
2) Using a 80 wired IDE cable? (At the moment I have been using an IDE cable without a hole in the connector (I guess is 40 wired, isnt'it?

Please let me know, your advices.

Alex