SONY DW-P50A burning problem on a Compaq Presario 2500

#1

Hello everybody,

this is my first post here. I have the following problem with my CD+RW/DVD+RW combo drive SONY DW-P50A. Recently I was playing around reading a write protected CD that I was able to copy with no problem with CloneCD. This time I used ‘readcd’ in Linux which is a wrapper practically of ‘cdrecord’ for all of those that know.

Anyway, after reading the raw image of the CD and the bad sectors associated with it I tried to burn it but couldn’t. That’s when I discovered that the burning process became messed up! I started getting those “power calibration error” messages that hint to some de-calibration of the laser I guess.

I’ve tried to burn anything into any kind of media after that with no success. I can’t even blank any CD+RW anymore.

Now I want to stress the fact that this is not a media related issue, since I’ve used different kinds of media just to check with the problem and in particular the kind of media that I have been using for CD+RW didn’t give me any problems at all in the past.

The drive is able to read anything just fine (even from the CD+RW media that I can’t blank or burn) but it can’t blank or burn on anything anymore.

I went to the Compaq site and downloaded the firmware update for the specific drive that I had done some time in the past, thinking that it might reset the drive to a proper state but it didn’t do it. The problem persists.

So my hope now is turned to the knowlegeable people in this forum. Any good ideas on how to solve the problem? I know that there has to be something there that I can do to restore the burning function on the drive!

Thanks in advance!

#2

i realise u r not using, but all i can suggest

#3

Thanks for the response! :slight_smile:

The only thing left for me to do from the checklist in the link you posted is send the drive for repair!

If the drive recalibrates itself everytime it writes something then I might try and eventually correct its myopic behavior just by trying to burn on lowest speed media possible.

Eventually I’ll get to the bottom of this!

Thanks anyway!

#4

see if anything from the below might help

  1. go through the 10 points listed @ http://www.mrbass.org/dvdnewbie/ [ you may not be a newbie, but the trouble is, and might be related to one or more of the listed items ]. note: very important to keep the transfer mode on IDE channels in DMA mode. check them every now and then as the transfer mode can change without you being notified. see this MS article http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

  2. a) know your drive’s capabilities. use nero info tool to discover them. also go to the drive maker’s website and find out what media types and brands, and at what speed to those media types, the drive supports. [ eg., my pioneers 107d & 108a can burn to dvd-rw @ 4x without trouble, but my optorite 401 can only burn @ 2x to dvd-rw even though Nero and other burning programs will allow the drive to burn @ 4x and will produce a “successfull” disc @ 4x…but the result is a coaster ] b) update the firmware of the drive. check for updates @ http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_all.php

  3. a) try another brand of CD/DvD disc. b) try burning at lower speed. eg., don’t burn at 24x to 16x media; burn according to MEDIA speed limits, don’t try to burn at the cd/dvd drive’s max speed until you are certain that you can do so without negative consequences.

  4. a) disable and/or uninstall any virtual drives. b) install an aspi layer. preferred is v460. get it @ http://www.snapfiles.com/get/aspilayer.html

  5. a) update the burning program you are using to the latest release. b) uninstall any recently installed software. c) do a virus scan, and a scan with spybot s & d [ get it @ http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html ]

  6. for XP or Win2K users, optimise your operating system Services for best system performance. for info go to http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/service411.htm#Alerter and http://www.freeware-alternative.uni.cc/downloads/service-controller-xp/service-controller-xp.html

  7. before burning, open taskmanager and shutdown ALL unneeded processes that are running. DON’T commence a virus scan or a defrag before or during a burn - sadly, i have seen it happen !

  8. a) try another burning software and see if you get a better result. deepburner standard is free. get it @ http://www.deepburner.com/ b) for users of alcohol 120%, update to the latest drives support DLL [ look for topic “Alcohol 120% Device Support Patch Released” @ http://forum.alcohol-soft.com/index.php?showforum=10 ] c) if you have multiple burning softwares installed, uninstall them all, then install one. test it. install another if needed. test it, and so on…

  9. make sure mainboard chipset drivers are up to date. make sure all cables and jumpers connected to drives are correctly configured with regard to master/slave setup.

  10. enter your BIOS and disable anything you don’t use. set memory speeds to default. set cpu speed to default. if you overclock, DON’T [ until you are certain that overclocking is not the cause of the trouble ].

  11. if you still cannot fix the problem, try the drive or the CD/DvD disc you are having problems with in another PC that has no burning issues [ if possible ]

  12. Disable autorun…unless you really need it for some purpose. for XP users go to start/run/type REGEDIT.EXE then click OK
    press Ctrl+F, type NoDriveTypeAutoRun in the box/find next
    doubleclick the highlighted key and replace the HEX value with b5
    repeat for each NoDriveTypeAutoRun key found. reboot.