Sony support fixed my DRU500a! Shock horror!

[Jo-Seth]

About 2 days ago my DRU500a suddenly stopped working properly. It would complete the write OK to DVD-R but would not verify (Recordnow and Nero). Discs were unreadable. Tried reflashing the drive (1.0d), to no avail. Restored a Ghost copy of the drive, no go. Rang Sony tech support, and the guy told me to enter winXP in Safe Mode and then remove all software and also all cd and dvd drives in the device manager. Did this and to my astonishment - it worked! Anyone know why though? What did doingthis achieve?

[dicktheprick]

might have had corrupted driver files

[Jo-Seth]

If I uninstalled all my drives under Safe Mode, when booting back into Normal mode, wouldnt it still use the same driver files as it re-finds the drives?? Its not like Windows asked me for the installation disc to load the driver files from afresh or anything.

[handyguy]

It keeps driver files on the HD.

[Jo-Seth]

Ok scratch everything I said - still not working. Sending it back to Sony...

[mkelley]

Um, I want to know what the number was that you called.

I can find no reasonable way of even contacting Sony support (and you have to do so in order to get an RMA).

[Roll Tide]

I'm currently having an issue where my DRU-500A will not recognize rewritables anymore. Regarding contacting Sony support, I have had the best luck using the live chat technical assistance on their website at http://sony.storagesupport.com/dvdrw/index.htm. Go there, select your model number, then click on Live Chat.

Both times I've used this, I've only waited 2-3 minutes for a support rep to connect. Each session has an ID number, and they email you a transcript of the conversation for you records. Should you have to hookup again, you can give the rep the session ID, and they can pull it up and get up to speed on your problem.

I tried calling their number (don't have it with me) but I was on hold so long that I gave up and tried the live chat.