LG ( Hitachi?) GSA-4040B DVD Writer

[Sneezy]

I've had my 4040B since early January. I've used Maxell, TDK, Memorex, Pine, and no-name, all with mostly good results (although for a name brand, I've had pretty bad luck with Memorex).

A few weeks ago, I had purchased a spindle of 4X Memorex DVD-R's. The first few burned fine, but then inexplicably the maximum speed for DVD's dropped to 2X. CD speed also dropped from 24X to 12X (despite using 32X rated media...again the first few CD's of the spindle burned at 24X).

I've tried Nero, I've tried Alcohol 120% for the CD's. I've tried rebooting, I've tried leaving the computer off for 12 hours just because. I'm using Windows XP Pro on an Athlon 1400 system with 512 Mb DDR Ram.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm thinking I may need to RMA the drive.

[tczack]

After hours of fiddling, I found a very low-tech solution to my problem with the LG (Hitachi) GSA-4040B not being able to burn DVD's that my DVD player on my TV could read. I upgraded the firmware on the drive, I tried 3 different burning programs (Nero, DVD XCopy, and CloneDVD, and by the way I like Nero the best), etc.

MEDIA....

I was using two different brands of DVD+R media, one from SOHOT, the other from SKY, and neither would even begin to play on my home system. I finally got tired of burning coasters, and tried an Imation DVD+RW that came with the drive, and voila, all is working fine. I need to go buy some better DVD+R and make sure, but this seems to be the culprit.