Reading the Burn on the PC

[DiscCoasterPro]

Hi all. After what seems like forever, I have finally talked a friend into burning his own DVDs. He still uses Win98 (which I did successfully for a long time with his same set up).

We bought an NEC 3550 DVD burner. It is alone as secondary master. After using DVD Decryptor and then DVD Shrink to backup one of his DVDs, Shrink launches Nero 6 ( I think 6.06) At any rate, the DVD encodes and burns ok, but it will not read from the NEC DVD burner afterwards.

We can put the product on a set top DVD player and play the burn ok, but we cant even get a folder read from Windows Explorer, nor will PowerDVD play the movie.

Is there some kind of setting in the Nero launch that is messing things up?

If we put the original DVD in the NEC it will display on the computer and it will play back from PowerDVD and media player.

thanks much
dcp

[photo_angel2004]

Which version is the nero?

Nero 6.6.0.18 works the best from shrink (for the versions of nero)

You may want to try IMGburn its free although I am not 100% sure that will work with 98.

There is a tool to test the quality of your burns and that is nero cd/dvd speed.

Does that burner read the originals?

http://www.cdspeed2000.com/

[DiscCoasterPro]

Thanks for the reply. Yes the burner will read the originals. This seems so strange. Is this a common thing?

thanks
dcp

[photo_angel2004]

What kind of blank media are you using maybe the media isnt compatable with your drive if the originals play and the back ups dont.

You may want to have a read on the golden rules of buring its the buring picture in my sig.

You may want to give IMGburn a try;

http://www.imgburn.com/

[DiscCoasterPro]

I'm using only Verbatim media purchased at Best Buy -Rs.

Let me back this story up just a bit and explain how an even stranger thing happened. Initially this drive wouldn't even take a DVD, it just rejected and opened the door when Shrink turned things over to Nero.

I took the drive out of his computer, brought it to my house, put it into my PC, grabbed an original of Analyze This (good movie), and decrypted, shrunk, and burned it with no problem.

Brought the drive back to his house, connected it and N/G. Now, as I said I backed up the story a bit. This was all when we had this NEC burner set as a master on the secondary IDE channel with a DVD reader on the same channel as a slave. After disconnecting the DVD Reader, we end up in the situation we are in now. It burns fine, it plays on TV Set top DVD player fine, but won't read anything we burn on itself....... that is ... except for that copy of Analyze This that I did on his burner, at my house <sigh> It will read that ok.

Is it possible that the power supply isn't providing the correct voltage for the drive to look at what was burned?

[cynthia]

I recently had the same issue. For some odd reason I thought I should update my VIA drivers (for the motherboard) on my prehistorical computer and then suddenly the burned disc could no longer be detected in my Pioneer 110D burner. The Nec 4551 still worked as it should. Got the older VIA drivers back and it worked again. Not sure this is your problem.

[DiscCoasterPro]

Just an fyi in case anyone was interested. After swapping burned discs to another NEC 3550 we learned that it could read all the discs burned on the first NEC, which as I mentioned the first NEC could not read after it burned them.

Conclusion was it was definitely a bad burner. I'm guessing the bad burner could read commercial DVDs as the depth of the information was correct, but the burner, after burning either too deeply or too shallowly, could not find the info. (thats merely a guess though)

thanks to all who offered suggestions.
dcp

[Chewy]

I had to clean the lens on my 3550 when something similar happened

[DiscCoasterPro]

Hi Chewy, at the risk of really sounding foolish, how do you do that? Is it merely using a cleaning disk or is it bending tabs and taking the unit apart?

[Chewy]

little tricky, I had blown it out twice before and no go, the problem came back

have to take drive out with tray open, just push the tabs in with a small tool and remove faceplate, turn the drive upside down and remove small screws,
gently pry off metal housing

turn it back over and there's the laser, I swabbed it with a clean cloth and a little eyeglass cleaner


some report success with a long qtip

I like to clean the guide rails and regrease tho

ur lens is probably dirty

air might work

[DiscCoasterPro]

Thanks, I did get an RMA for return, but it seems the 3550 is no longer available at that website and I liked that one. I have nothing to loose, I'll let ya all know.

ty

[Chewy]

don't break the seal on the case if you are going to rma

mine was over a year old and had burned/ripped scanned hundreds of disks

I too was sentimental about it

[DiscCoasterPro]

Ahh, good point. Would you happen to be familiar with any of the other replacement choices at newegg.com? It seems the newer NECs are leaving much to be desired. I was thinking about that Samsung. I suppose they are all good if they work.

thanks again!

[NightTran]

get the light on, many pp say it great