Help - GWA4164B Burning Slow

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers LG burner
#1

A friend bought a Dell Dimension E510 that came with a HL-DT-ST GWA4164B DVD burner. I took the old Sony CDROM (read only) drive out from her old PC and installed it on her new Dell. Burning 16x TDK DVD-R or Memorex DVD+RW, the Dell supplied MyDVD LE v7 reports current burn speed varying between .9x to 1.8x max. This was burning a 3.9GB video_TS file. MyDVD LE hung up about half way and I had to ctrl-alt-delete to end it. Looking at the actual DVD, it is about half burned. Tried twice and same symptoms twice.

Her config is:
p4, 3.0GHz, 1GB ram
80 GB SATA system hard drive
GWA4164B DVD burner on IDE-0, master
Old Sony DVDROM drive on IDE-0, slave

Dvc Mgr shows:
Primary IDE Channel
Device 0
Transfer Mode - DMA if Available
Current Transfer Mode - Ultra DMA Mode 5
Device 1
Transfer Mode - DMA if Available
Current Transfer Mode - Not Applicable

Primary IDE Channel
Device 0
Transfer Mode - DMA if Available
Current Transfer Mode - Ultra DMA Mode 2
Device 1
Transfer Mode - DMA if Available
Current Transfer Mode - Not Applicable

Secondary IDE Channel
Device 0
Transfer Mode - DMA if Available
Current Transfer Mode - Not Applicable
Device 1
Transfer Mode - DMA if Available
Current Transfer Mode - Not Applicable

QUESTIONS:

  1. Why are two Primary IDE channels listed instead of one?

  2. Since there are currently the DVD burner and the old CDROM drives on the primary IDE channel, why is device-1’s current transfer mode shown as “not applicable”?

Someone directed me to a HP web page for a HP firmware upgrade to their HLDS GWA4164B burner. But I read a post somewhere (maybe on cdfreaks) that the HP firmware will not work on the HL-DT-ST version of the GWA4164B drive.

Any ideas why her GWA4164B is burning slow or why the MyDVD LE hangs about half way through the burn?

#2

Remove the old CD-ROM. I’ve found that some older ones have problems with XP & can cause strange problems.

Once this is removed try again.

BTW avoid Memorex media as you never know what you’re getting. Verbatim generally are a fairly safe bet.

#3

Will try removing the old CDROM drive and thanks for the Memorex tip. Hoping to hear from someone who had this problem and found the fix.

#4

Any other ideas? The problem is on a friend’s PC so I can’t test suggestions as they are given but I hope to test several on Tuesday when I go to her home.