I’ve been using Plextools for the last 15 months or so and have not been able to get Plextools 2.09 or 2.10 to work at all.
I have read similar posts on this message board but there is never a clear resolution. WHAT MAKES THIS PROBLEM SO STRANGE IS PLEXTOOLS 2.08 AND LOWER WORK FINE. I believe the problem has something to do with new features found in 2.09 or higher, probably related to the new DVD functions.
Both 2.09 and 2.10 behave the same. After I install them and reboot when it tries to load in the system tray it freezes the computer up. Rebooting into safe mode and disabling it from starting up allows me to boot the computer up, but as soon as I load Plextools it crashes. I have tried clearing the registry, deleting the Plextor directory and reinstalling from scratch, but it doesn’t help.
I am running Windows 2000 with service pack 4. My plextor drive is a 48/24/48A model with the 1.05 firmware.
I also have a Pioneer DVD-R DVR-A05 drive and a Pioneer DVD-ROM DVD-115 drive. All three of the optical disc drives are on the motherboard IDE controllers of my Athlon Nforce2 A7N8x-Deluxe motherboard. I am using the regular Windows 2000 Microsoft IDE drivers. The drives are all in Ultra DMA mode.
I also have a Promise Ultra133TX2 controller that I use with two hard drives. I have the latest BIOS and drivers installed for that controller.
I am not running any software on startup that does anything special with the drives (no Alcohol or other ripping related software).
I believe the problem is either a conflict with the other optical drives or possibly with the controller. The 2.09 change log does indicate “Support for adapters with multiple busses” and I wonder if that isn’t something that is causing it to hang?
Any recommendations or suggestions? For the time being I am running Plextools 2.08 but I would like to update at some point.