I posted this question in another forum and I just found this one, it seems to be much better at troubleshooting. Below is my original question and the replies I got, I have tried many things. Sorry for the length...
(ME) Hi, I am starting my summer semester pretty soon and my old Asus CD burner stopped working, it wouldn't read any burnt media. I then got a NEC 3520 from newegg. The unit will read media but I cannot burn. I tried to make a normal audio cd using Nero, Easy CD-Creator, and Roxio (the software that came with it). It would either fail at the burns or say it was burning and completed successfully but the CD-R would still be blank. I then tried TDK CD-Rs and then Asus CD-Rs and nothing worked. Finally I tried flashing the drive with NECs newest firmware (3.04). Any ideas? I need the drive for school next week.
A final question...when I go into my 3520 in Device Manager it asks me for the region code. It says I only have 5 times to change it and then I can never change it again. I put region 1 (US) and the next time I started my computer I checked it again and it said no region selected with only 2 tries left! What should I do about that? Thanks
-For the region, load up the region free firmware:
http://tdb.rpc1.org/#ND3520A
-From my experiences, this is a pretty worthless forum for trouble shooting. Unfortunately, I know not of a better CD/DVD forum.
Was your media blank or unreadable? You can look look at the data side to see if the "color" has changed.
Have you tried burning any DVD's? As I remember, I couldn't burn CD's on my 3520A either, but had a CD-RW in my laptop and stopped trying.
(ME) I think the media might not have been able to be read. If I put a blank disk in and clicked on the drive in My Computer it would say device is not ready/Retry? or Cancel. I am getting very worried because I am going to need it in 2 days.
Hoxlund, what firmware version should I use? I see that there are many. Any step by step directions for flashing? Thanks
-That is normal behaviour
-Whenever you have problems with a CD burner, always use CD-RW at first so you don't waste a lot of CD-R's.
Try putting in a new or unimportant CD-RW into the drive. If it is supposed to have data on it, check My Computer to check the CD to see what data is on it. Go into the software that came with the drive and there should be something that says "Erase blank media" or something like that. Run it. Now, check the My Computer or Explore the CD-RW. Did the data disappear?
Ok, maybe you don't have a CD-RW with data already; just a new one. Try using the Nero, Roxio, whatever program came with it to burn any file onto the disc. Go back to the icon in My Computer, and explore it. Did the data appear?
(By the way, do you have InCD or some other drive burner drag and drop program installed? Sometimes if you have two or more of these types of programs, they can conflict with each other. You might check your Task Manager to see what programs/processes are running in the background.)
What you may try if nothing else works is uninstalling all your burning programs that you can find. Re-install just the program(s) that came with your drive. They've been bundled with it, and should work. Basically, your problem is either software or hardware. I would be very suprised if a brand new CD or DVD "burner" drive would not burn out of the box because of a hardware problem!
(ME) Ok, I previously used a CDRW and the data is read ok. I will try erasing it when I get home. I will not be able to burn data onto a CDRW though, since the burner isn't burning. I do have other burning programs so I will also try to delete them and just run one program. I will update you all later today when I get home, Thanks for the help so far, I appretiate it.
(ME) The burner would erase a CDRW but the size was 572MB with 571MB free space afterwards. I then tried burning again and it failed right away again. Roxio always says Unkown Error 0X33000003
I will try removing all the burning programs and reinstalling Roxio.
(ME) I took the disc out and put it back in. Roxio the free space said 702MB and it now says the same thing in my computer so at least it seems to erase ok. What next?
-Try using Roxio to copy any small file from your hard drive to the CD-RW. Then check it to make sure it's there.
-Sounds like you have DragToDisc or DirectCD installed on your computer.
if you can , uninstall it. it might be interfering.
(ME) I was able to burn two program files onto a CDRW using Windows as my burning program. At least I know it can burn.
I uninstalled every program that has to do with burning any media, I then just installed Roxio (the program that came with the drive) The results were the same when trying to create a audio CD on a CDRW. I am getting so frustrated, I start school on Monday. I checked my Primary and Secondary IDE channels and they are all at "DMA if available". Please help, any more ideas?
