Sony DRU 500a Firmware Upgrade 2.0H

[igalan]

Igalan:
My apologies. I thought LacyWest was referencing some type of character I was not familiar with.

No problem .

By the way, I did uninstall the Sony drive and tried to re-boot normally and in safe-mode. No luck.

You can try a system restore before doing a reinstall. Just boot from your Windows XP CD-ROM and choose to do a repair when prompted. If this is successful I would reinstall the SP1a and check WindowsUpdate.

[handyguy]

"By the way, I did uninstall the Sony drive and tried to re-boot normally and in safe-mode."

What exact computer is this?

Anyway, did you try pushing f8 ? hold that when you turn on the computer & a restore menu may comeup along with a safe menu. as mentioned above you can also use the cd if you inform the bios to boot from it.

[igalan]

BTW, in this forum you can find information to help you recover from a serious crash.

[Fairhope]

"By the way, I did uninstall the Sony drive and tried to re-boot normally and in safe-mode."

What exact computer is this?

Anyway, did you try pushing f8 ? hold that when you turn on the computer & a restore menu may comeup along with a safe menu. as mentioned above you can also use the cd if you inform the bios to boot from it.

Handyguy: My computer is a Dell 4300 with WinXP Home Edition SP1. I did try pushing the F8 key which did bring me to the area where I could select Safe Mode. However, when I would select Safe Mode or any other mode, it would bring me right back to another screen asking me what mode I wanted WinXP to start in.

Igalan:

Many thanks for link. The document it leads to pretty much nails my situation. I've saved it as a Word document and printed it off. I'll be trying it out before my last resort of reinstalling the OS. This document needs to come standard with all WinXP applications.

[lacywest]

BTW, in this forum you can find information to help you recover from a serious crash.

Nice info ... I downloaded the zip file ... I haven't printed it up yet.

I believe my WinXP Rescue program is similar ...

After reading how it works ... I did the same thing. I used the floppy disk made with WinRescue ... got into DOS.

Used the program to take me back to most recent backup ... I then used Windows Restore to get me to the most recent backup made.

Of course ... there was some program or two that didn't work and I had to re-install them ... but WINXP Rescue did work ... it's a good program.

Just make sure to make the Floppy Disks and keep them safe from external damage.

[morac]

I can't be absolutely certain, but if I'm not mistaken. The Sony firmware updater is supposed to disable DMA itself, hence the reboot when you first run it. Then after it reboots, it processes the firmware upgrade while DMA is disabled. Then when it's done it reboots again, I imagine this is to re-enable DMA. Can't remember if all the firmware updates have been like this but they've been this way for a while.

The firmware upgrade utility disables auto-run (which is why it reboots) but not DMA. I've flashed with DMA enabled before but it caused my PC to hang when the upgrade utility tried to reboot the machine after flashing. The flash worked, but it was messy. I think that's why they recommend disabling DMA because it's unpredictable what will happen. BTW external drives don't use DMA so you don't need to disable it.

[bottle-necked]

I remember reading something about flashing a drive like that from DOS, but I can't remember much about it now.

For a new drive Pioneer and Sony are both good I hear.

Good luck.