LG GH22NP20 problems

[skadog]

Life is not good!!!

Refrigerator, wife's cell, a brand new washer and dryer... they all work great so I figure an LG dvd burner will be the ticket... sound the buzzer= WRONG!

When I first got it, plugged it in and it would only play a dvd. Would not recognize a blank disk at all. Sent it back to the service reps for LG and it was promptly returned four weeks later. I figure I'll get to it soon and set the box aside... the wife was in the middle of painting the bedroom. Well, all (de)construction is over now so I figure I'll try the burner again. Buzzer sounds again. I dig out the paperwork from the box and find what I hadn't seen the first time... the reps had just returned to me the old machine! Well, I spend a good part of last weekend fiddling with it and after quite a few false starts I finally get it to burn a dvdr5. Tonight I go back with much trepidation to try a dvdr9 and it writes the leadin fine and then begins to get write errors... I'm stumped at this point. Also, the new LG seems a bit sluggish in recognizing blank media and responding to ImgBurn...

So, my system is XP SP3. It's an older AMD athlon 1800, 512 mb ram. The TWO burners I have are ganged on one IDE bus. The older Maddog (NEC) dual burner is set to master and the new LG burner is set to slave. On the properties, device 0 = DMA, Ultra DMA mode 5. Device 1 = DMA, MW DMA Mode 2.

The 5 year old Maddog has been a beast. In human years, It's probably pushing a hundred and I wish I had bought more than one when I got this one. On the last stack of TY 2.4X dvdr9's it made 4 coasters (3 all in a row and from the end of the stack) so I figure I need an exit strategy for it. Well, this LG burner ain't it.

If anyone can give me some help on the dual layer burning problem, I will try anything at this point.

If no one can give tech assist, perhaps some nice soul in the crowd can suggest another dual layer burner that will give me some good service once I put the old Mad Dog down...

cheers

[Bjs]

Welcome skadog

You have been bitten by the "it ain't updated" on the store shelf syndrome.

Firstly remove the older drive from the "chain" so only the lg unit is available ... Then bolt over to http://www.lge.com/us/support/product/support-product.jsp , select optical media, then model , followed by downloading latest firmware.

Follow instructions and when done, reboot system and try another test burn using imgburn.

[skadog]

Bjs,

I'm assuming the drive is the same as I sent off to the LG service center. One of the things I tried before it was sent back to service was to flash the newest firmware to it... no help.

I will retry on your suggestion in case the paperwork is wrong. Any suggestion on how to set up the new LG in the chain? My ole' maddog is still burning great on dvdr5's so I don't want to shoot him just yet. Should I pull the ole dog out, put the LG to master, flash the LG (if needed), then plug ole dog back in as slave?

BTW, test burn with ImgBurn last night produced a coaster... could not believe it! Of course, the new LG was grinding like a roadster when speed shift missed its mark! (setting BIOS from "auto" to "dvdrw" made that go away, so much for the fabled plug and play!).

cheers! and thanks so far!

[JohnnyBob]

Optical burners are cheap and I replace mine every year whether they need it or not. I've used Lite-On and LG models for several years. The current pair (recently installed) are Lite-On iHAP322_9 and a LG GH22NP20 (same as yours). My prior generation drives were LG H55N and Lite-On DH20A4P

First thing I did was flash the LG GH22NP20 with MCSE to remove the rip-lock, which worked great. It's a fast ripper now, quite a bit faster than the Lite-On iHAP322_9.

With my prior generation of drives, the LG H55N was better for burning DL discs, the Lite-On DH20A4P for single layer discs, if you lend credence to CDSpeed/DiscSpeed scans. With the current generation of drives, the Lite-On iHAP322_9 wins on both accounts, so I use it to burn everything now, DL and single layer.

There's a lot of factors involved in getting good burns, but #1 is the media. If you're buying them now, you should get the MKM-003, which are 8x Verbatim DVD+R DL, coming in a #96542 spool of 30 discs. These are good quality. Burn them at 8x if your system is fast enough. These newer faster optical drives burn better at faster speeds than slow speeds. If you're using 2.4x media, you can probably (and should) burn them at 4x or 6x. In my experience current Verbatim DL 2.4x media are crap. They were excellent (the best, anywhere) a couple of years ago, then turned sour. I suggest staying away from them. Only use the 8x DL Verbatim media now!

I get best results burning from my master hard drive, so I suggest that as a possible improvement. Sure, slave and external drives may work, but not as reliably. Any partition on the master drive is OK. I have a big master hard drive so that's not a problem.

You might notice an improvement with 1G RAM rather than your 512MB RAM, if your system allows it. So I suggest plugging in the extra RAM if possible.

You can't multitask while burning, especially with your older slower single processor. So when you're burning turn off everything else possible. Don't use your mouse. Don't update your anti-virus. Don't poll for email. Don't surf with your browser, etc. If you've got any resource hog processes, turn them off while burning.

If you still can't get good burns, then you may have a lemon. Send it back for a refund or throw it in the trash, and get a new drive. They're so cheap now that it's not worth a big hassel.

Good luck!

[skadog]

Guys, all good info... but LIFE STILL SUCKS!!!!

Took the other drive out, set the LG to master all by itself, DL'ed the firmware update, booted up and flashed the drive. No, I did not use MCSE because I'm a puss. Once drive is flashed I rebooted and got the BIOS message "primary drive not atapi compatible" or close to it. Hit F1 and went into XP and tried a DL disk. The drive kicked off fine but got 20% into the first layer and gave it up. Write errors out the wazoo. Back to ^2 one... yes, at this point I'm using 8X TDK (ritek) DL disks. I know everyone on this board screams "use better media" when things go wrong, but I've used ritek disks for years without any problems. I try to stick to TY, verbies, and riteks when I can. Even when I strayed, the old Mad Dog would burn them right... I have five year old burns playing like champs to this day...

Can anyone give me a push in the right direction? I'm setting the BIOS setup to dvdrw and not sure I should. The error message and the need to hit F1 on restart concerns me.

In lieu of technical help, any suggestions on a replacement burner will be greatly appreciated.

So, cheers all!

[budz]

Before you even decide to buy a new burner buy a new 80 wire ide cable.
Newer dvd burners require a 80 wire ide cable which are cheap. Even though your older dvd burner works fine with the ide cable that you have buying a new one could solve your problem. When a 80 wire ide cable isn't used the dvd burner will not work correctly or recognize dvd media.

svc.com has some on clearance for 99 cents!
http://www.svc.com/md-24-ata-3bu.html

LG drives supposedly have spyware built into their firmware. It's a little program called, "BLUEBIRD".
PIONEER drives are now rebadged LITEON drives. Get a SAMSUNG dvd burner. I bought the same LG burner for a relatives pc about 3 weeks ago and it works great. Where did you buy yours from? online? retail store?

To any mod: This should be in the DVD Writer section.