sony DRX-500UL -Veritas DLA- erratic dvd+rw

[garrywb]

I have had my sony for about a year now and have used it on two PC's, a Win98se and now a WinXP home PC. Am using Veritas DLA v 3.58

I have had a lot of problems getting the DVD+RW disks to allow me to add files on a daily basis. I have used 4 different Verbatim DVD+RW's and also 4 different Sony's.

On the Win98SE PC I finally got it to be consistent once I determined that Zone Alarm was a conflict. I changed ZA to not load at startup and tried to remember to load it when going online (dialup).

I now have it on a WinXP home machine using broadband cable for internet. I do not use ZA but the firewall that comes with XP.

I can add files to the DVD+RW for several days before it suddenly and without any indication, it will simply hang while trying to "drag and drop" from within Explorer and the front light on the sony will start a quick "double blink". You cannot close it, you cannot close windows and reboot, the only solution is to turn the power off on the sony and then unplug the XP PC. What's really ironic is that if you leave the DVD alone and after a couple of days and maybe several reboots of the PC it will finally allow me to do a "full format", in which it will still hang up but after a power off and restart it will allow a "quick format" and then it will work again for several days.

I have e-mailed Sony (from within thier website) several times concerning this and not once have they even acknowledged that I even existed.

I feel this is a driver conflict of some sort but am not familiar with XP enough to know how (or what) to start turning things off and on to trouble shoot like I did with the win98se and Zone Alarm.

Has anyone had any similar things to happen, or can anyone point me in the right direction.



Thanks Garry

[garrywb]

Found my own solution.

Apparently this burner is very sensitive to the type of media.

I picked up a couple of Memorex DVD+RW disks and all is working well.

DVD+RW must be alot more sensitive than DVD+R.

Garry

[garrywb]

Spoke too soon.

The unit quit again.

Apparently what is happening, the unit will record about 60-70% of a DVD+RW and then experience some type of problem and then trash the disk, making it unusable.

Sony gave me an RMA#, will report back on what happens.

Garry

[bottle-necked]

If your new blanks didn't fix it I'd send it back. Sony makes a great product (check my stats) but ....

Good luck