Second/Third LG DVD burner does not work on Vista

[legendster]

Ok this is a very weird problem and I am using computers since I was 3 and today I m 20, this is so anoying that i finally had to post my first forum post asking for help related to computer hardwares.
Nuff braggin.
Anyways, Here's My spec :
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit
Asus Motherboard P5KPL-AM/PS
Intel E5700 D-Core 3.00 ghz processor
500 GB WD Green Hard drive (Sata)
Biostar GT 220 1GB DDR3 (nvidia Chipset) Graphics Card
1st Optical Drive : Sony RW DRU 190A (PATA) [Master]
2nd Optical Drive : LG DT ST DVD RAM GH22NP21 (PATA) [Slave]
3rd Optical Drive : LG DT ST DVD RAM GH22NS70 (Sata)


My problem lies with the 2nd optical drive which is the Slave PATA LG GH22NP21



Here's the deal :
It ONLY detects a media (be it CD or DVD) when it is BLANK, My other drives will read that very same disc which probably is writter an hour ago but that Drive wont read anything else other than a blank disk.
If I insert a perfectly working DVD in it it just keeps blinking (the light) and then the light just stays on forever.
Whenever I try to write something in it be it with Nero 9, 10 or 7 OR even LG Power tools, the progress bar for writting stays at zero - I once left it overnight to see if it progresses even by 1% but no luck - all the while the light on the Drive is not on at all.. But as soon as I hit the stop button the write starts progressing goes about 10-15% and says "Operation aborted by user" pisses me off wasted 10 verbatim DVD's on this!!!



So let me know if I am missing any details and if this is fixable ?
THE ONLY reason I bought this PATA drive inspite of having a SATA one is because the SATA drives dont give the option of writing DVD's at 4X (if it does PLEASE show me how)






THE MOST IMPORTANT AND WEIRD THING OF ALL : This Writer works fine when connected to a different computer, reads perfectly writes perfectly ! I even changed the PATA (IDE) cable re aligned the Jumpers to MASTER/SLAVE and now both to CSEL configurations but NOTHING WORKS







So Guys PLEASE help me out here !

[Joe The Dude]

It is puzzling. I had a similar issue when I tried to add a third drive to an XP PC.
I wound up having to install a PCI IDE RAID Card, and set up all of my IDE Optical Drives as Master,
and only one Optical Drive per IDE Cable.

To this day, I don't know why this was necessary. O_o

Have you tried removing all 3 Optical Drives, then only connect the Problem Drive as a Master on your IDE Cable?

[Nelson37]

I agree with Joe's suggestion, sometimes two drives just will not co-exist on the same cable.

[budz]

try using IMGBURN to burn your blank discs.......also change the IDE cable......make sure it's a 80 conducter, 40 pin IDE cable......make sure you have the latest Intel chipset drivers installed......

http://www.svc.com/md-24-ata-3bu.html

[budz]

I agree with Joe's suggestion, sometimes two drives just will not co-exist on the same cable.

I never had problems with using two dvd burners on one IDE cable. A lot of times some peeps use the IDE cables that come with hard drives which sometimes will not work with 2 dvd drives attached to it. The IDE dvd burners from a few years back you gotta use the 80 conductor 40 pin IDE cables or they won't work correctly. Also using the latest chipset drivers is another important thing. The IDE dvd burners that were used in pc's that had VIA chipset would create problems that when using a PCI controller card. Lots of variables.

The OP said he uses NERO to burn which we all know can be buggy. I'm curious to know if he's used IMGBURN to burn DVD discs.

[Nelson37]

I said so because I have seen it happen. I was not making a guess.

[legendster]

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that I DID mention that I even used LG POWER TOOLS to try and burn ! But forget burning this thing wont even read anything !!
I wasted 10 DVD's trying to burn from different burners even ALCOHOL 120 !!!

I also mentioned that I JUST changed the cable from the stock Asus cable to a new IDE cable.
Now what's this thing about 40 / 80 pin how do I know what is 40 pin or what is 80, do they physically look different ?

[legendster]

And yes currently the ONLY device attached to my cable is the new PATA drive that is causing all these problems, the other PATA is disconnected (even from power source) and the 1st Optical drive is attached to a SATA socket completely different and separate from an IDE.

[legendster]

And before having a SATA Hard drive I had a PATA 80 GB Hard drive from Samsung, it HAPPILY co existed along side my old PATA DVD writer on the same cable.

And the most unfortunate thing is in my board there's only one socket for IDE connector so.. cant have multiple of them anyway -_-

[hello_hello]

I've seen plenty of weird IDE issues. Hard drives and optical drives. Some that won't play together on the same cable, a DVD drive which locked up the computer when connected to a PCI-IDE card but worked fine connected to the motherboard, I even had one hard drive which locked up the BIOS when connected to one motherboard as the master, but if I added a second drive and made it the slave it worked fine. The same hard drive worked by itself when connected to a different PC as master. Then there's drives which need to be set as master and slave because cable select doesn't work properly......

Try cable select jumpers on the drive or try master or slave. Try the middle connector on the cable instead of the one on the end. In theory if you use cable select or set the drive to master the drive should be on the end of the cable (if it's the only one), but try setting it to slave and/or using the middle connector. Some drives have two jumper positions for master, one with a slave drive and one without.

Older versions of Windows can fall back to running drives in PIO mode on the odd occasion (rather than DMA). I'm not sure if the same applies to Windows 7 or whether it'd cause the problem you're having. I'm on XP and the mode can be checked by looking at the properties of the IDE controller in Device Manager.

All IDE cables use the same number of pins on the connectors. The difference is 40 "wire" and 80 "wire" cables. The 40 wire cables look more "coarse" and as a general rule don't support using cable select. Pic: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/IDE_cable_40_pin_%26_80_pin.jpg The 40 wire cable is the one on the right.
40 wire cables are supposed to have the master (or only) drive on the middle connector. 80 wire cables are supposed to have the master on the end connector. 80 wire cables support higher speeds but either should work.
If you're using the cable which came with your MB it'll be an 80 wire cable.

THE ONLY reason I bought this PATA drive inspite of having a SATA one is because the SATA drives dont give the option of writing DVD's at 4X (if it does PLEASE show me how)

I've got several PATA and SATA DVD burners. All Pioneer. I use an old version of Nero. All of them will let me burn at 4x. Are you saying you can't select 4x as a burning speed?
Mind you, I'm not sure why you'd want to, although there's no hard and fast rule. Different burners burn better at different speeds and it also depends on the type of media, but there's just as much chance of a slower speed decreasing the quality as there is it'll increase it.

[Nelson37]

When you disconnected the second drive, did you change the Master/Slave jumper? Use master/slave rather than cable select; this removes a cable dependency. Eliminate the variables.

Have you tried to read a commercial DVD? Possible the laser has gotten weak, common to lose burn function and also ability to read burned disks, reading a pressed DVD is usually the last thing to go.

40-wire and 80-wire cables are the same width, meaning much finer cables for the 80-wire. They are easily distinguishable.

MOST pairs of drives will happily co-exist on the same cable. When you have been exposed to a few hundred pairings, you will then discover that some will not, usually maintaining some basic functionality but suffering either severe performance penalties or strange and specific loss of function in certain areas. A few will not work at all.

[budz]

I don't understand why you haven't even tried using IMGBURN to burn your discs......as for the IDE cable I gave you a link where you could purchase one.....

I have a shit load of IDE DVD burners and SATA one's.....I have one pc with 3 IDE dvd burners and 2 SATA one's......I wouldn't even bother using LG tools to burn or NERO......

[Bjs]

With all the guess work happening not one mention to try changing out the psu ?

[legendster]

@hello_hello

I have tried switching the positions before as you said, none helped, I commented on this earlier. And yes I found out that mine is a 80 wire (39 pin) cable, so was the old cable which I replaced.

Last night to be sure I tried switching between PIO mode 4 and UDma mode but they didnt work either.

I personally store DVD's writing them at 8x or 16x and write movies at 22x, I write and backup my PS2 Games at 4x because the darn thing doesnt supports a faster written disc (Yes my PS2 is Modded)

The point is not whether 4x is good or bad, the POINT is that my SATA writer doesnt gives me the option of writing at 4x, It shows 8x 16x and 22x .


@Nelson37
I tried all Master/Slave combination and now the drive is set to CSEL i.e since day before yesterday.
The first disc that I tried was a commercial Music DVD bought from Planet M

Remember the drive worked flawlessly when connected to a different machine - I even bought the CABLE with which it worked on that other machine The only difference was, THAT WAS AN XP MACHINE !


@budz
I aint buying any stupid software bro
But If you dint noticed I SAID that I TRIED VARIOUS COMBINATIONS of burners and wasted 10 DVD's !!! and IMGBURN was ONE OF THOSE "VARIOUS BURNERS"



@TO ALL
I believe this is a Vista problem do you guys think so ? because remember it read and wrote fine on a different machine, I even brought home the DVD that it itself wrote on that machine but when connected to my PC it doesnt detects it (same old story)
Remember, before this I already had a single Sony's PATA writer connected to the same connector, which is now disconnected, but when they were BOTH connected the Sony drive worked flawlessly as usual its only this LG PATA that's eating my brains out ! HELP HELP HELP !

[legendster]

@Bjs Well thats something new, I could do that, meaning another 550 bucks going into LaLa Land for me lol But I m certain it wont solve a thing cuz this PSU is just 7 months old and never subjected to any pressure cuz I ve got a dual battery 800va UPS, I have no reason to suspect it anyway.
BUT if all else fails I will try this !

HELL - I ve got 2 spare mother boards and a processor I get an SMPS and a cabinet and an old Harddrive I got myself another whole computer LOL !

[legendster]

& Before anyone says it, I DID update my Chipset last night, still same'ol same'ol.....

[legendster]

If anyone solves this OR shows me that its possible to write at 4X with a SATA drive I ll tell the tales of their chivalry (no matter how f***d up ther user name be :P) to my grandchildren !! lol

[budz]

@hello_hello

I have tried switching the positions before as you said, none helped, I commented on this earlier. And yes I found out that mine is a 80 wire (39 pin) cable, so was the old cable which I replaced.

Last night to be sure I tried switching between PIO mode 4 and UDma mode but they didnt work either.

I personally store DVD's writing them at 8x or 16x and write movies at 22x, I write and backup my PS2 Games at 4x because the darn thing doesnt supports a faster written disc (Yes my PS2 is Modded)

The point is not whether 4x is good or bad, the POINT is that my SATA writer doesnt gives me the option of writing at 4x, It shows 8x 16x and 22x .


@Nelson37
I tried all Master/Slave combination and now the drive is set to CSEL i.e since day before yesterday.
The first disc that I tried was a commercial Music DVD bought from Planet M

Remember the drive worked flawlessly when connected to a different machine - I even bought the CABLE with which it worked on that other machine The only difference was, THAT WAS AN XP MACHINE !


@budz
I aint buying any stupid software bro
But If you dint noticed I SAID that I TRIED VARIOUS COMBINATIONS of burners and wasted 10 DVD's !!! and IMGBURN was ONE OF THOSE "VARIOUS BURNERS"



@TO ALL
I believe this is a Vista problem do you guys think so ? because remember it read and wrote fine on a different machine, I even brought home the DVD that it itself wrote on that machine but when connected to my PC it doesnt detects it (same old story)
Remember, before this I already had a single Sony's PATA writer connected to the same connector, which is now disconnected, but when they were BOTH connected the Sony drive worked flawlessly as usual its only this LG PATA that's eating my brains out ! HELP HELP HELP !

I never told you to buy software.....IMGBURN isn't one of those various burners....

[Steve(MS)]

No I don't believe the problem is Vista, I have 3 burners in mine.

[hello_hello]

If anyone solves this OR shows me that its possible to write at 4X with a SATA drive I ll tell the tales of their chivalry (no matter how f***d up ther user name be :P) to my grandchildren !! lol

Looks like I was wrong. I just checked my burners using a Verbatim disc and according to Nero InfoTool the newest burner (Pioneer DVR-218) doesn't support burning at 4x to those discs. 6x is the minimum. I'd never noticed that before. My Pioneer Bluray burner (BDR-206) does, as do the other older Pioneer burners (SATA and PATA), but none of them have the same maximum burning speed as the DVR-218 (20x).

I doubt SATA vs PATA is the reason you can't burn at 4x. It seems to be determined by the burner's firmware and the type of disc you're using. Ironically, you may have to use a lower quality disc which the burner doesn't support at higher speeds to burn at 4x. How does the PS3 know which speed you used to burn a disc?

If you've tried everything else it may simply be the drive and your MB just don't play well together. I doubt it's drivers or the OS as IDE drives all run using the same generic Microsoft drivers. Have you looked to see if there's a firmware update for your drive?

[Nelson37]

I doubt the problem is Vista, but that can be tested. Get an XP live CD, like the UBCD, boot from that and test. That will take Vista completely out of the picture. Eliminate the variables, one at a time.

You mentioned the only difference wherein it worked was XP, that is not the case. Different mobo, different PS, different power usage. I don't think it's power, BUT have you tried a different power connector? Ideally on a different power cable.

You mentioned master/slave combinations, I am keying on the word COMBINATIONS. Have you tried the single optical drive, by itself on the cable, set as Master? I personally NEVER use cable select.

With regard to cables, both power and IDE. The simple act of removing and replacing a cable means it has been flexed and turned, it is possible there is a broken or damaged wire causing intermittant connection. I once had a power cable that worked with the drive outside the case, turning it to connect to the same drive mounted internally caused failure. The failure remained consistent through several installs and removals. Change both if possible. I have had numerous IDE cables fail after a disconnection, the actual connector housing is not mounted all that securely.

I would focus on the IDE cable as it appears that you ARE getting power, everything going wrong involves Data.

[fritzi93]

I had a similar issue when I tried to add a third drive to an XP PC.
I wound up having to install a PCI IDE RAID Card, and set up all of my IDE Optical Drives as Master,
and only one Optical Drive per IDE Cable.

The above bears repeating. Like Nelson37 commented, sometimes two drives won't coexist on the same cable.

PCI or PCIe IDE cards are cheap. I have one in my office computer. If nothing else works, that likely would.

Good luck.

[Kerry56]

I doubt SATA vs PATA is the reason you can't burn at 4x. It seems to be determined by the burner's firmware and the type of disc you're using. Ironically, you may have to use a lower quality disc which the burner doesn't support at higher speeds to burn at 4x.

This is an important bit of advice! Take note of it.

And as many have already said, sometimes burners just don't coexist well on the same cable, or even the same controller.

Buy a SATA burner instead. I'd advise getting an Optiarc 7280s.

[legendster]

I doubt SATA vs PATA is the reason you can't burn at 4x. It seems to be determined by the burner's firmware and the type of disc you're using. Ironically, you may have to use a lower quality disc which the burner doesn't support at higher speeds to burn at 4x.

This is an important bit of advice! Take note of it.

And as many have already said, sometimes burners just don't coexist well on the same cable, or even the same controller.

Buy a SATA burner instead. I'd advise getting an Optiarc 7280s.

I guess you havent read my OP I already said THAT I HAVE A SATA (a new one -) BUT IT DOESNT LET ME WRITE at 4x !!

PS: By Caps I m not implying that I m shouting just pointing out clearly !

[legendster]

I m taking a few pointers from here and I ll reply to everyone tomorrow and please guys I appreciate your help but my earnest request to you is to PLEASE read the first post most of you are suggesting what I already did.

And Mr Ninjitsu I TRIED IMGBURN !!!!! ITS A DARN SMALL SOFTWARE WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY I DIDNT ?? I KNOW WHAT I DID

Ps; This time I m shouting but not rudely !! See i m still smiling

[Nelson37]

Just want to point out that your use of IMGBURN was not specified until post #14. "various burners" is not the same thing.

Like a Master/slave "combination" is not the same as "master, alone on the cable". It is important to be precise.

I also mentioned a UBCD disk for test, the same could be done with a Windows install disk, any version. Disconnect the hard drive and attempt to boot from the problem optical drive. This takes the OS out of the picture and tests the drive and system hardware only. Burn failure or burning program not a factor.

Eliminate the variables. Isolate and Identify.

The PSU has been mentioned, other than a faulty connector, IMO this possibility has been eliminated by several facts - it boots and runs, it runs with other drives attached (meaning a greater power load), the problem drive works in another system (meaning no unusual load from this drive), also the drive indicates that it is receiving power.

[Kerry56]

I doubt SATA vs PATA is the reason you can't burn at 4x. It seems to be determined by the burner's firmware and the type of disc you're using. Ironically, you may have to use a lower quality disc which the burner doesn't support at higher speeds to burn at 4x.

This is an important bit of advice! Take note of it.

And as many have already said, sometimes burners just don't coexist well on the same cable, or even the same controller.

Buy a SATA burner instead. I'd advise getting an Optiarc 7280s.

I guess you havent read my OP I already said THAT I HAVE A SATA (a new one -) BUT IT DOESNT LET ME WRITE at 4x !!

PS: By Caps I m not implying that I m shouting just pointing out clearly !

Yes I did read the original post and noted that you had one, count it, one SATA drive. If you need 3 drives for some reason, and want to avoid conflicts with the second IDE drive, buy a SECOND SATA drive.

Next, use IMGBURN!

And as a final step, buy some Taiyo Yuden 8x +R dvds, as they are some of the finest blank dvds available. ImgBurn will let you burn them at 4X. Imagine that. Instead of trying to burn some crapola 16x disks at a speed that they don't burn well, you can use a very good Optiarc burner, the very BEST burning software, and the best optical media to accomplish what you want.

[Joe The Dude]

Does IMGBURN allow people to burn at 4X on drives that don't natively support it in their firmware?

[Kerry56]

^No. But using TY 8x media, you will get the option to burn at 4x on any drive that I've seen made in the last 7 or 8 years.

[Joe The Dude]

Ah. I was just curious, as I'm not very familiar with IMGBURN.
I do agree with ya on the TY media though, they make great stuff.