What is going on???

[wowthatshuge]

My burner will not spit out anything but bad discs. I have had it for about a month and have made 5 good DVD backups and about 7 good VCD backups. What is going on. Can someone please help me troubleshoot. Really worried. It is a Pioneer A03. I have tried Nero and copy2dvd to burn. And dvdshrink, to shrink. NOTHING WORKS. PLEASE HELP!!

[Solarjetman]

Well, you really need to be more specific. You say it doesn't work, but then you proceed to say you have made 5 successful DVDs and 7 VCDs. That is a little contradictory. Try to give more detail.

A wild shot in the dark guess would be you are using high-speed media without updating the drive's firmware. IIRC, Any model before the A05 cannot handle the faster media types and it may actually cause damage if you did not update. I saw some warning in my last box of disks, but I threw it out because my drive was not on the list of affected drives.

[wowthatshuge]

i made those discs then my burner started crapping out. how do i update the drivers firmware, and what exactly is firmware.

[Duchess]

Firmware is the software inside the burner that translates the instructions from the computer into mechanical and electrical actions. It is possible to update the firmware with the right software.

Such software can be found at http://www.firmwares.co.uk/ which has the updates for the Pioneer burners, including the A03. However, be warned that using the updates can possibly damage your burner beyond use, although most of the time it works out OK.

To be on the safe side you *could* get the firmware updates from Pioneer themselves at http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/support_software.jsp?category=support/software#fdvdrom but even that can go wrong.

Good luck

[ablaize]

You may want to look at the media as well. I buy discs in lots of 100-500 and it is not entirely uncommon for me to hit a "bad patch" of discs where 4 or 5 will fail in a row and then no problems. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does it's frustrating, but when you're only paying 80 cents a disc it doesn't break your heart.

[Duchess]

when you're only paying 80 cents a disc it doesn't break your heart.

I concur, but there is a another downside to using cheap, cheap discs in that the life may not be too good. An awful lot of cheap CD discs have been found to be unreadable after about 9 months due to degradation of the dyes. As DVD discs use the same dyes as CD's it therefore follows that the same problem will be exhibited by the DVD discs. In my experience this has been borne out by the fact that I've had 2 discs that played fine when I had just burnt them but are now unplayable after 8 months.

I contacted Ritek about their discs and they told me that they expect their discs to last in excess of 30 years in a normal home environment provided they aren't placed in sunlight or in close proximity to heat. So guess who's discs I shall be using in the future!

[ablaize]

Out of curiousity, what brand were you using before. I use Princo 1x White Tops and Princo Printable 1x, as I burn massive amounts of DVDs but am not in a hurry during the process. I have not had any of these fail, but the oldest one is probably only about a year old.

[wowthatshuge]

I have been using a varitey of discs. Verbatim, TDK, Sony, COMPUSA. And varying between 1x and 2x to see the best possible disk before i buy in mass quantities. I bought 3 of each kind, total of like 15 discs, including one TDK dvd-rw. All of them worked just fine prior, now nothing will work. Does anyone know could have possibly happened, and should i go ahead and download the new firmware. Thanks you guys for your time, i really appreciate it.

[Duchess]

Out of curiousity, what brand were you using before.

I don't really know for sure, I just bought whatever seemed like a good price although most of them were listed as ADVDINFO: AN31 but I did avoid Princo on the advice of a lot of other people.

[Duchess]

I have been using a varitey of discs. Verbatim, TDK, Sony, COMPUSA. And varying between 1x and 2x to see the best possible disk before i buy in mass quantities. I bought 3 of each kind, total of like 15 discs, including one TDK dvd-rw. All of them worked just fine prior, now nothing will work. Does anyone know could have possibly happened, and should i go ahead and download the new firmware. Thanks you guys for your time, i really appreciate it.

Quite honestly, if you've been using the drive before and successfuly then I have my doubts about the firmware upgrade fixing it. What Operating System are you using? Have you installed any more software since your burner stopped working? Will the drive burn CD's? Can you give more info that would help to try and diagnose where your problem lies.

[Laddydaddy]

You haven't used a 4x disc by mistake have you?

[wowthatshuge]

I have'nt used any 4x discs. The operating system i am using is XP. I upgraded the firmware and it still does not work. Using Copy2DVD, it says "write error 04 08" or something similar to that. I cannot find what that means. Does anyone else know??? I was constantly downloading new DVD burning/shrinking/authoring software to try new stuff. I have removed everythng, defragged the computer, and re-installed just the necessities to back up my DVD's. Still, get that write error. Any suggestions, im about to throw this thing out my window.

[Duchess]

There is one more possibility, some virii block various functions of the PC. The ability to run antivirus measures for instance, and this can have a knock-on effect in that it can inhibit the ability to use a CD/DVD writer.

I've only ever met this once, but it is a possibility.