Hi all - my first post here, and I hope it's not a common question. I looked in the FAQ, but no joy.

I have some media that Nero CD-DVD Speed detects as OptodiscK001. It's 2x DVD-R media, and it's probably 3 years old. When I load it into my NEC ND-1300A and then try to drag and drop files in an explorer window, I get "Windows encountered a problem when trying to copy ... ". Under the Nero utility, the media identifies as empty, but when I try to Create a Data Disc (F9), it errors out with "No blank disc inserted".

The NEC will play back DVDs and will create on some older CDR media, so I think the drive is prolly okay. The DVD-R media is silver on the top and light purple on the bottom. On the top of most of the media there is some "bleed-through" of the purple color around the outside edge of the top of the disk. I don't recall this discoloration being there when I bought the media, and I have used media from this lot before, but it was about three years ago.

Has this stuff just gone bad?

thanks for any tips,
sluggo

Unistall InCD from your system. Avoid the drag'n'drop burning method, better use Nero Burning Rom. Packet writing software are causing problems all the time.

Get also the latest firmware for your drive.

(in reply to sluggo)

Antonio - I don't have InCD installed. I've updated my firmware one on this device, and since I had used this media on this device once before I'm pretty sure it's not a firmware problem. I don't believe it's a packet writing issue, as I've tried other methods of accessing the media, and even Nero cannot write to it (as I mentioned in my first note). Also, packet writing to my CDR media works perfectly on this machine.

sluggo

(in reply to Antonio)

Well, as he stated above, REMOVE the packet writing software that you have.... then try again.  Packet writing software "always" causes problems, and it's "NEVER" reliable.

(in reply to sluggo)

You should be right as you are just try some better media, Optodisc isn't very good. Use MCC (Verbatim DLP)/Ricoh/Taiyo Yuden/Maxell/Mitsui etc., all quality media manufacturers. I'm confident the NEC will have no problems with these media.

(in reply to MP3Mogul)

Clearly I'm missing something here. As far as I know, I don't have any special packet writing software on my machine. What I do, I drop a blank, unformatted CDR into my drive, Windows opens a folder window, I can pull files into that folder window and Windows will then write those files to the disk when I tell it I'm ready to write. It's my understanding that Windows XP operates this way right out of the box, and no special software is required for this functionality.

Now, If I drop my DVD-R media into the same drive and repeat the above steps, when it comes time to write the files Windows tells me it encountered a problem. The way that the drive gives me different results for different media leads me to believe that there is either a problem with the media or the drive, but I don't see how OS services could be at fault if it's able to write to one type of media and not another. On the other hand, I'm new to this and have a lot to learn.

Maybe there is some packet writing software on my machine - if there is, I don't know what it could be. Are there commonly used software packages out there that install packet writing software? I'm running a pretty bare-bones setup on this machine.

thanks for your patience,
sluggo

(in reply to MP3Mogul)

quote:

ORIGINAL: sluggo

Clearly I'm missing something here. As far as I know, I don't have any special packet writing software on my machine. What I do, I drop a blank, unformatted CDR into my drive, Windows opens a folder window, I can pull files into that folder window and Windows will then write those files to the disk when I tell it I'm ready to write. It's my understanding that Windows XP operates this way right out of the box, and no special software is required for this functionality.

Well, the WinXP functionality for burning CD/DVD through drag-n-drop is not different that using a special packet writing software. Both sometimes cause problems, however. If I were you I would not use it, although it is convenient. You can disable it by disabling the IMAPI service through the services window in the control panel.

In your case, the ND1300 obviously does not like the specific Optodisc MID.

(in reply to sluggo)

You have confused me, in your 11/27/2005 post, the last line says you ARE using packet writing software.....  Please explain, you either ARE or you ARE NOT... you state that you aren't, but then you post you are..... Could you please choose an answer so that we can assist you.

A)  Yes I have packet writing software installed

B)  No I do not have packet writing software installed.

As stated above, packet writing software causes major headaches.  A good reply above my post was to disable the IMAPI writing in your windows.. this will also help. 

If you insert a blank CDR and a FOLDER opens, you have packet writing software installed and active on your system.

(in reply to Tony Veglis)

MP3Mogul and Antonio - So sorry for the confusion. When you guys recommended removing any packet writing software I took that to mean any "third-party" software (such as InCD), and that the basic Windows functionality was safe. Tony V's reply gave me the schooling I needed and cleared things up nicely. Good advice from all, I just needed that one piece of data to understand it =)

I'll disable IMAPI and give it another go =)

Thanks to all,
sluggo

(in reply to MP3Mogul)

"No blank disc inserted". This is the most common issue when a packet writing utility runs on the backround of your syste,.

If by disabling  the IMAPI service nothing changes with the specific media, then a different firmware might help or better another disc, as Clint suggested you.

(in reply to sluggo)

As Tony explains... Unless of course you 'like' WinXP's built in recording software (provided by Roxio), however if you use third party recording apps (such as Nero etc.), this can conflict so do as Tony says. Try different brands of medium.

(in reply to Antonio)

I thought I should follow up and let you all know what I've found. I went out and bought Nero and I love it - great advice.

The original (old) media is still problematic. I'll use Nero's DVD test to write a random data disk, but when I go back and analyse the disk bad sectors start appearing at around 60% of the way in, and then at around 64% the analysis stops after a sequence of 20 or so bad sectors. I can read pressed DVD's and other burned media on this drive with no problem.

I bought some new media (TDK DVD-R, apparently made by Toho) and the drive doesn't recognize it at all. I've got the most recent factory firmware on the drive (1.0B), but the drive simply won't do anything with the media. I'm sort of new to this - is it possible that a drive that's three years old will not have firmware support for the media that I can actually buy now? Will I have to find a supported media and buy a bunch of it to last the life of this drive?

Thanks again for the help,
sluggo

(in reply to Clint)

Yes it's very possible a 3 year old drive will not have updated firmware, actually it's HIGHLY likely. 

(in reply to sluggo)

If a drive is too old it is more than possible that the new media IDs won't included in its firmware. So if there is no recent firmware then we talk about incompatibility.

(in reply to MP3Mogul)

Last follow-up, I promise :)

I bought a new drive, a Benq 1640, and it has no problems with the new TDK media. The manufacturing date on the old NEC drive was July 2003, for what it's worth.

Below are the test results for the old and new media. The Optodisc media was complete crap and could not be taested past 3.25GB or so.

New TDK media
---------------------
General Information
Drive: BENQ DVD DD DW1640
Firmware: BSMB
Disc: DVD-R (TTH02)
Selected speed: 8 X
PI errors
Maximum: 309
Average: 59.28
Total: 906241
PI failures
Maximum: 6
Average: 0.31
Total: 2682
PO failures: 0
Jitter
Maximum: 10.2 %
Average: 8.40 %
Scanning Statistics
Elapsed time: 9:43
Number of samples: 17950
Average scanning interval: 8.00 ECC
Glitches removed: 0


Old Optodisc media:
--------------------------
General Information
Drive: BENQ DVD DD DW1640
Firmware: BSMB
Disc: DVD-R (OPTODISCK001)
Selected speed: 8 X
PI errors
Maximum: 1224
Average: 134.15
Total: 1847192
PI failures
Maximum: 2633
Average: 146.43
Total: 1864848
PO failures: 1230446
Jitter
Maximum: 24.3 %
Average: 9.56 %
Scanning Statistics
Elapsed time: 11:43
Number of samples: 15872
Average scanning interval: 8.36 ECC
Glitches removed: 0


regards,
sluggo

(in reply to Antonio)