Power Calibration Error - The Olde Chestnut

Dear Sirs, (and Sir-esses)

I have trawled this fine forum looking for answers to the above "Chestnut" but have literally come up blind. I have got to the stage where it seems there is no alternative other than dispose of the whole pc. I am running XP pro (sp2 inc), Athlon XP2600, 1 Gb ddr, latest Nero (spits), (even though I have tried older versions which still don't solve the issue), and using either Pioneer 108 or Nec 3500a - both with updated firmware. I cannot burn DVD's now, it won't finish one. It gets to the point where the drive steps up it's speed (around 10%) and then holds it's hands up and declares the error. I have even re-flashed the bios and all drivers are current. I use Ritek media. There seems to be a passage of information problem- a bottle neck so to speak. Next step is to install a new M/Board, but then that's getting silly. I have also on occasion, had difficulty in transferring large data files from one drive to another, they appear to disappear and Windows tells me that it couldn't save them and that the host folders are empty.. but if a re-boot is done, they are back where they are.. "There's Nowt as Weird as Windows"
Any Help will ensure a special message to Santa, as he is well known to me.

Thanks. (still sane-ish)

I may be wrong, but, I thought/think I have seen or read about this Power Calibration Error before and thought/think it has something to do with media.

Please feel free to correct me, anyone, if I have this wrong.

Have you tried using different media to burn your DVD's to ?

It may be worth a shot.

Have you tried burning your DVD's with a different program ?, I would suggest trying DVDdecrypter, highly recommended by many people.

I was just thinking about this a bit more, and now I'm also starting to think this is a drive problem, may be time for a new one.

Can the drive read discs ?

I would certainly try different media before buying a replacement DVD burner.

I had this error when burning CDRs with a CD burner last year. I was sure it was the burner as the CDRs would burn fine in other burners. However, I tried a different brand of CDRs and they worked. That burner has burned several spindles of CDs since without any problems....

Im surprised you searched but didn't get an answer. Get some TY media. Necs are somewhat picky on media. I have one. Likes the better stuff.

It is a drive issue. If you are using crap media, it may help temporarily to get premium grade media but it will eventually give you the same error on every kind of disc. I would just get a new drive because while you may be able to burn on better media, it will most likely produce discs with more errors on them.

Searching all forums here I got over 200 hits on 'Power calibration error'. Anyway power calibration is mostly internal to the burner. It does a short test burn on a protected part of the disc. This sets the laser power and probably some other things.

If the laser lens is dirty or the laser is failing, you can get that error. It can also be caused by bad media.
Best advice is to try different media, clean the laser and worst case if all that fails, replace the drive.

If it's happening on two different drives and the media is not the problem, maybe the power supply is, though you would probably have other problems in that case.

My experience with calibration errors is they are caused by an incompatibility between the burner and the particular media you are trying to burn to. It may or may not indicate a problem or level of quality of either - just that they don't work well together. For example, in my Sony 510a burner - it burns at 100% success to Ritek G04 4x media all day long. I tried burning to Ritek G05 8x media - instant problems. Yes - my Sony 510a has the latest available firmware. I switched back to G04 media and returned to my 100% quality success rate.
The moral - find the media that works well in your drive and stick to it. Do a search on your drive in the "DVD Writers" area of this site and see what media folks are consistently successful with in your drive to start.

Having said all that - I did have an old 4x HP cdrw drive that started having calibration errors many years ago - and a good cleaning resolved that one. So, maybe a cleaning is in order also.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this issue. I must say however that It happens with both drives and on different pc's. I am using what i regard to be "quality" media (Ritek) so i fear that is not the problem. When I placed the NEC 3500 in the system, I did get errors, but of a different kind... it would burn complete but when the film was played back, it would get to around Vob 3 (50-70mins), then freeze and skip back several chapters. I would try Decrypter to burn, but i am not too sure how to use it. !!! I did also say that i was getting an issue when taking a film off of an external drive and sending to an external one, i.e. it would say that it could not save all the information and that the files were empty (host).
Any further help would be appreciated,
many thanks

S.

I had this problem half way down a 50 cake dvd set. My drive would work fine on dvdrw though. I think the laser uses a diffrent frequency on RW discs. Tried cleaning the drive laser but no good, so in the end replaced the drive and no more problems. I would suspect that it is the drive failing as they don't last forever.

I started getting this error on my Pioneer 107 and eventually started getting solid incompatible medium installed messages before it would do my verify and wouldn't read DVD-R's at all. I initially thought it to be the media as well until I finally replaced the drive with one I had sitting around and all is good. I took the covers off the defective drive and cleaned it up with some canned air, but have yet to try it back in a machine, figuring if the current one ain't broke, don't fix it. I will in time though....

"I am using what i regard to be "quality" media (Ritek) "

Maybe you got some fakes.

I think all this is great information. I get a power calibration error message when I try the erase dvd+rw disc. My NEC ND 3530A burns the dvd+rw disc without a problem, but I can't use them again because it won't erase the media. I have change from officedepot +rw media to sony +rw media, still getting the same problem. Funny thing is.. these same exact disc that are giving me problem will erase and burn again on another pc with a philips dvd+/-rw drive. I have reload the firmware, uninstall nero6.6, media will not erase with sonic 7.3, with vso copytodvd media window state erasing completed, but the data is still on the disc.
One surprise, the media was able to re-record after I erase the disc using the philips drive which I couldn't do previous to the reloading: these were the officedepot +rw.
This is on my dell 8400, had it since April '05. no problem with cd rw, using them over and over.
I'm at my wits ends, appreciate any suggestions, thanks inadvance

yogi228: one post is enough.

this is what i tried, and also i only use dvd's in the drive seems to me cd's and different media play a part or i'm just p-niod --mine has worked ok since.

"this might be some help to all you guys out there which are having problems with this power calibration error.what i know is that the cd burning engine which comes with xp was developed by adaptec (i might be wrong so please dont hold me to it).so heres what to do and most of your problems hopefully will be solved.this is the easiest way to tell everyone."


1 on desktop click start
2 select control panel
3 click on administrative tools
4 click on services
5 browse your way down to IMAPI CD BURNING COM SERVICE
6 right click (on IMAPI) then select properties
7 in the middle of the window it will say start up type.click on the arrow to the right and select disabled.
8 make sure you click APPLY

thats it folks.you should notice that nero starts alot faster aswell
original thread
http://www.gidforums.com/t-1805.html

I still having a power calibration error when I'm trying to erase +rw media. I took my drive out and gave it good cleaning. Still getting same error.
I did what you stated about the IMAPI, same thing.
Can still burn any media, so that's ok, I'll just resigned to the fact of using just dvd +/- media.

Thanks for your help.