MicroAdvantage 4DVDRW-B13 Wierd One

[N715DP]

I have done days worth of searching here and elsewhere and I haven't been able to find anyone with a similar problem to the one I am seeing...

I have a MicroAdvantage 4DVDRW-B13 (the 4X drive that OfficeMax had a huge MIR on). My father purchased it for me up in Colorado and there isn't an OfficeMax closer than 100 miles to me or I would just return it. I received the drive at Christmas and immediately started burning all kinds of stuff. He also gave me a 25 pack of KHypermedia DVD-R's that all worked okay (I did have a few coasters because I screwed things up), for all intents and purposes the drive was working great.

I picked up some Memorex 4X DVDr's and started burning through them (pardon the pun) when with no issue as well.

A few days ago, out of no where, the drive decided it didn't want to "see" any blank DVDr I would put in. The DVDRW that came with the drive still spins up and is seen as usual, as are any CDr's that I put in to burn, but any DVDr I put in does not spin up and all burning aps show "no disc in drive".

Here's where it gets odd... randomly, the drive will spin up the DVDr and I can burn it, but there is no rhyme or reason to when it does this. For example, yesterday, I woke up and put the same blank in I had been trying to use the night before and it recognized it right away and I was able to burn with it.

I have tried several different brands of DVDr's and all yield the same thing - randomly, the drive will actually see it. All-the-while, the drive has no issue with RW's and CD's.

I have done many, many things to trouble shoot this, including reverting to a couple of different firmwares (0043, 0046, 0047, and the latest, 0048). All witht he same results. I have removed the drive in Device Manager and re-installed it. Removed and re-installed NERO, Alcohol, Decrypter, and my ASPI drivers. I have even formatted the OS and reinstalled it, all of the above except the firmware was a futile effort as I was pretty sure this was a hardware issue. There is nothing uncommon about my system and everything else works without issue.

I should also note that I have found that this drive is the same as the BTC 1004 that has been relabled to a lot of different makes. I have not been able to find anyone with the same issue with any of these re-labled models either.

Anyone have any ideas?

[N715DP]

I forgot to mention that I wrote to MicroAdvantage support yesterday (Saturday) with basically the same thing as above. Their site shows that Support only responds during business hours so I won't hear from them until tomorrow (Monday) at the earliest... needless to say, I am not holding my breath that they will be able to solve this. Driving to the nearest OfficeMax would cost more than the drive is worth, however, possibly they will be able to work out some kind of RMA with me if they (or someone here) is unable to fix it.

[lordsmurf]

Clean the laser

[N715DP]

Thanks for the reply, that's certainly something I never thought of... forgive me for being ignorant, but how exactly would I go about doing that, I have never had an optical drive that required it.

[N715DP]

Is this what you are referring to?

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?cat=103102&dept=3944&product_id=1745016&pat...18402%3A118406

[N715DP]

I ran a cleaner through the drive... no luck.

On a good note, I heard back from Microadvantage first thing Monday morning and they provided all the information I needed to RMA the drive. The are very good so far with support and stated I should have a new drive within 3 days of my shipment getting to them. My computer seems naked without my writer in it... funny how attached you get to something only after a few short weeks.

[lordsmurf]

Don't use a cleaner ... do this: copy and pasted from another site

A "Power Calibration Error" is usually associated with a failing laser and starts first to occur at 2x speed. Power supplies have also been known to give this problem.

However, it may be simply just be an accumulation of dust or haze on the laser lens and it may just require cleaning which is quite a simple process. Take out your DVD-R writer.

These instructions are for the Pioneer DVR-A03/103 DVD-R burners. However, it should work just fine on other writers.

1. Unscrew 4 screws on both sides of writer, not the funny looking middle ones !
2. Take of the front mask and the top cover
3. unscrew 4 screw on top of the inside cover.
4. take of the inside cover.
5. Apply a small amount of Isopropyl Alcohol to a cotton bud.
6. Clean the laser lens GENTLY with the wet cotton bud.
7. Dry the lens GENTLY with a dry cotton bud
8. Reassemble the drive in the reverse order
9. BURN some MEDIA at 2X

Isopropyl Alcohol is a surgical spirit and is used as a cleaning fluid in the tv and electronics industry it is commonly used in tape head and VHS tape cleaning kits. It is commonly referred to a "rubbing alcohol" and can be bought for mere pennies at your local pharmacy.

Tryt to use a Q-TIP brand cotton bud. Others tend to be more coarse and can scratch your laser eye. The Q-TIP ones also tend to not be furry or leave cotton strings.