NEC writer stops reading DVD's

[Mikael]

My NEC ND 1300-A writer has suddenly stopped reading (and writing) DVD's. It simply doesn't find them. It still plays CD's perfectly however. I've got the latest driver, and it has worked perfectly for a couple of months.

Thankful for any suggestions to the problem!

[GKar]

What a coincidence! My NEC ND-1100a stopped reading DVD's too. I just contacted Memorex for an RMA. All I can suggest to you is to try different IDE ports and Master/Slave combos and to make sure ASPI is installed properly. My guess is it went belly up, especially if it was working fine before. Did you make any changes to your system prior to it failing?

[Mikael]

No, I didn't make any changes. At least not any that could have possibly affected the DVD burner. Do yours still read CD's too?

[GKar]

I tried flashing it with different firmwares and with the later one it reads CD's, the earlier original one doesn't. I suppose it's possible both our drives went out of calibration. Have you ried cleaning yours? It didn't help mine.

[Mikael]

I talked to my dealer today, who I bought the burner from, and who installed it. He said that it's not unusal that the burner starts to behave like a CD drive after being flashed with the new firmware 1.08. I have flashed it with 1.08, but it's over a month ago, and everthing has been fine until now. I have tried re-flashing, but without success.

[bookbiz]

The latest firmware is 10GE for the 1100A. Go to support.dell.com to download. 108 is outdated.

[Gazorgan]

If it does CD's but not DVD's invariably it's the laser gone bad. The laser is actually a dual frequency unit (CD and DVD use different wavelengths). 1/2 of it can go bad and you lose DVD or CD. If you lose CD and DVD both, it's usually a physical problem or in the IDE circuitry.


It's Dead Jim (RMA it).

[EtaBeta]

The same is happening to me but, strangely, my 1300A writes DVDs regularly but cannot read them!