just wondering...

[King Roi]

Hi all,
I've been having problems with two NEC ND4551A drives.
The first one is currently under RMA for this fault and now the second is doing the same.
When a blank or full DVD-R or DVD+R is inserted the drive shows that a blank DVD RW is inserted, also, when a DVD+R DL is inserted the drive shows that a DVD RAM is in the tray. CD ROM's & CD AUDIO are ok, just all DVD discs, retail ones too, are being misread by the drive. Weird stuff indeed, especially now that this is the second NEC drive to do this. They were both bought at the same time via OVERCLOCKERS UK - possibly a faulty batch?
I maybe thought it was an ASPI issue, but after reinstalling & trying FORCE ASPI a'la DOOM9, im still getting the the drive errors. Oddly, I have a PIONEER 108 on the same IDE, set as the slave & its working fine - not a single glitch, hmmmm....
Its the same when set as master & the NEC is the slave. It would appear to be a faulty NEC drive, but how unlucky am I to get TWO identical drives fail in identical ways? Makes me wonder about the stability of my PC - but then again, why is'nt the PIONEER 108 experiencing problems?
However, when the first drive failed, i was trying out Nero7, the other one failed shortly after i installed ImgBurn 2, which leads me back to ASPI errors.
Never had any problems like this at all with good old DVD decryptor - is there compatibility issues between ImgBurn & DVD decryptor? I have both currently installed & honestly cant see why/how they would corrupt each other or the system, but something is causing this!
I want it to be a faulty drive - its an easy fix, but two failing in identical ways is worrying, lol!

Nice to see Lightning UK here, I wondered where the dvd decryptor gang went after the close of the old forums/website. Is Shamus Mcfartfinger still alive? I heard he was killed in a freak kangaroo incident - but it could just be hogwash, lol
Greets to all the old dvd decryptor regulars

[Chewy]

does nec do this when run as standalone master? You are using a standard
80 conductor ultracable, no special dell cable select one?

[King Roi]

thanks chewy, gonna try that. The ide the drives are on is the one that came with the dell pc & has allways been ok. I've never had any issues with any other DVD drives, i used to favour Pioneer & have had a 107, 108 & 109 untill i thought i'd have a go of these new (at the time) NEC lableflash drives. They were both ok, no glitches & full speed.
I was reading about Pgc edit & pskill. I was using this recently & got the warning about pskill.exe from the system. Thinking this was an infected file (which i now know is'nt) I deleted, and carried on with the ISO creation with PGC edit. From what i understand, pskill is used to kill mkisofs, & if i'd deleted it would mkisofs not been killed & somehow caused this?
After the pgc edit iso creation I tried it with ImgBurn, to compare the two iso's - it was after that when the drive errors began.
Im sure this happened to the previous nec drive too.
swapping the ide's now...

[Chewy]

now why do I guess Dell out of all the computer manufacturers when I see something so off the wall like this?

That cable may not support master slave??

Lord knows what dell does in bios either, must be the curse of Shamus,
or the corn crop circle effect, or a liverpool one?

[King Roi]

holy cornholio, swapping the ide cable had no effect!
It behaves the same when its the only drive on the cable too, must be a faulty drive?
I know they cost peanuts nowadays, perhaps this 'cheapness' is starting to effect us end users? All the big names seem to have a new model out each year, perhaps with normal use, these drives only last 12mnths?, Mine died within 6 mnths, lol!
Props to my old pioneer 108, still going (touch wood) and putting my nec's to shame.
it does seem strange though why both failed in exactly the same way..
It would be nice to be sure that its not a faulty chipset or anything else nasty just waiting nuke all my data.

[Chewy]

got any friends that have a computer that does dvd's?

[King Roi]

sadly not.
I've just been trawling dell's site for answers, the automated thingy took me through what looked like a fix, but it was all stuff i'd tried previously myself.
Also recently, i had a brand new maxtor h/d fail too. This is also under rma, could all this be related to a bigger problem? Again i bought two identical h/d's, ones ok the other 'was' ok - then started playing up, slow transfer speeds, read & write errors etc.
or am i the unluckiest guy on earth this year?

[King Roi]

now this is getting weird....
I've just reinstalled ImgBurn, and now ImgBurn can see the DVD-r correctly in the drive but windows cant. Im currently doing a test burn to see if it makes it to the end ok & its clocking at x14 at the moment.
you're right chewy, its the curse of old fartfinger.
This is baking my noodle - suddenly the drive is half faulty??
surley this must be an ASPI issue.... & dare i say it, 'related to the install of imgburn'?

[Chewy]

I have a saying, the only good aspi is a dead aspi. I dug up an old thread between Luk and Ollie(the clonecd man), it said basically the same thing.

Aspi's a bad holdover from Win9x days, nero's works good.

[King Roi]

can i still use nero's but without having nero installed?

[Chewy]

what do you need aspi for in the first place?

[King Roi]

I read on the nec website that this kind of failiure is maybe ASPI related, see here, http://www.de.nec.de/faq_detail.php/...e/613/lang/GER
quote from the page :
More than one installed burnersoftware can cause problems, because some software(s) replace ASPI driver by their own, which is incompatible to others. Known errors are e.G. correct written CD/DvD is shown as blank or system freezes and bluescreens during burn prozedure. It is recommend to install only one burnsoftware for testing, you can use actual trial release of NERO ( http://www.nero.com ) and check your burn project again. Note: Nero offers his ASPI driver on his homepage under "utilities".

so i got my assumptions from there. I googled it too, but with mixed results

[Chewy]

It is recommend that device should be connected to secondary IDE port as master. The (bundled retail) unit should be connected with delivered standard UDMA-2 cable.

old link, rest is out of date, for nec 1100 drives

http://www.bustrace.com/downloads/devfilter.exe

download this tool

http://www.bustrace.com/products/devfilter.htm

post a file of the nasties

try using the drive as cable select?

[King Roi]

apologies for the age of the link, but that was the only reference to this kind of issue on the whole nec site. I thought maybe this kind of error was more common & applied to current configurations too - well - in a round about way, lol

heres the results

----------------------------------------------------
Filter Driver Load Order http://www.bustrace.com
----------------------------------------------------

Upper Device Filter: redbook
Device Object: _NEC DVD_RW ND-4551A
Lower Device Filter: imapi

Driver Name: redbook.sys
File Location: c:\windows\system32\drivers
File Description: Redbook Audio Filter Driver
File Version: 5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) [5.1.2600.2180]
Product Name: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
Product Version: 5.1.2600.2180 [5.1.2600.2180]
Company Name: Microsoft Corporation

Driver Name: imapi.sys
File Location: c:\windows\system32\drivers
File Description: IMAPI Kernel Driver
File Version: 5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) [5.1.2600.2180]
Product Name: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
Product Version: 5.1.2600.2180 [5.1.2600.2180]
Company Name: Microsoft Corporation


appreciating your help chewy!

[King Roi]

lol,
the fookin thing seems to be working ok now
Tried 2 burns, both ok.. go figure that one!!
Maybe its an intermitent problem?

When i originally installed a second drive, long ago, the dell instructions from the manual said to make both drives cable select on the jumpers. This never worked for some reason and the only way the system would use the drives correctly was with the master/slave set up.
Gotta love those dell 4600i's...