DVDA hates my drives

[Lorinda Norton]

I recently got a new PC and upgrade to Vegas 6 with DVDA3.0c. Because I could never burn a DVD with my old setup without going through the extra steps with Nero, I was pretty pleased that I could burn from DVDA.

That didn’t last very long. For some reason, it just stopped working. Thinking my fairly inexpensive burner had gone kaput I bought a new one. Long story short, I’ve tried four different brands of drives and DVDA doesn’t like any of them! One of them worked for a few DVDs and then stopped; others won’t give me burn speed options, another goes as far as the burning stage then gives me write errors, etc. My friend in town gets it to work fine, but I can’t seem to find the magic drive. Is going back to Nero my only solution?

[Peter Jefferson]

what kind of burner is it??
What kind of IDE interface are u using? PCI card or straigh tot he Mobo??

one thing i learnt the hard way many moons ag, was to stick with the products which have the least issues. For burners, i have to say (knock on wood) that i have never had an issue with Pioneers. Theyre dirt cheap now and are reliable. Since the A02 all those years ago, these units have never let me down (knock on wood again)

[Lorinda Norton]

Hmm, so unlike the tech guys I've spoken with who insist it's a software problem, you think it might be the hardware?

I'm going from the drive straight to the Motherboard, and my newest burner is a Liteon. I'll see if I can exchange it for a Pioneer.

Thank you, Peter!

[Peter Jefferson]

it could be software, but if ALL your software is having issues with the burner.. then... well u get my drift...

I only mention pioneer as from my own experience and with the number of drives which we have here, weve never had an issue with them

[Lars Siden]

Today most burners are the same "kind". First of all, there are only like 3-4 different producers - that sells the drives OEM and then the drives get labeled "Toshiba" "TDK" "LiteOn" "samsung"....

Apart from that - most, 99.97% of the IDE drives (that is Hdd or DVD/CD burners) uses the built-in drivers from the OS. So if you use Win XP SP2 - and check the drivers for the drive I can almost guarantee that it will say Microsoft. This is because all CD/DVD drives must follow the old ATAPI standard.

Enough technical mumbo jumbo - I see 3 things to check

1. Does burning from DVDA directly work when you have NERO installed? If so, then you're having a software problem with windows that NERO fixes when it gets installed

2. Do you have some kind of "direct to DVD/CD" software installed? That is can you copy directly from Explorer to DVD/CD and the files burns "automatically"? If so, uninstall/de-activte it

3. You have attached the unit on an IDE channel using "cable select" instead of "master/slave" and maybe you have another "cable select" unit on the same ide-channel(cabel). If the drive is solo on the cable, make sure that it set to "master".

3.5 make sure that you have SP 2 installed

3.6 Easy CD/Win On Cd etc is EVIL - if you have them installed - remove them and try again!

Good luck!

Best regards,

Lars Siden

[Lorinda Norton]

Thank you for your help, Lars.

I just installed Nero 6 with hopes that #1 on your post would come true. It didn't. With the Liteon burner (thanks for that extra info, btw) it'll start the burn but then the write error occurs. I've used different brands of media but it doesn't seem to matter.

None of that other software you mentioned exists on this PC. I've got SP2. The drive is set to slave --a removable drive is on the master.

So, I gave up on DVDA and tried to burn a disk with Nero. It burned fine, but there's no audio. (There is audio when I preview in DVDA.) I've never needed the surround sound so never rendered to AC3. Is that necessary now? In the past the video files I added to Nero contained the audio.

[Edward Troxel]

Lorinda, At this point, I would do as you did and just burn with Nero. However, Nero should NOT affect the prepared files in any way (especially one that would only affect audio).

You say you have audio in the DVDA preview? What happens if you point something like WinDVD to the prepared folder? Does it also get audio? What happens if you play the DVD in the computer - do you get audio?

If yes to these, I would check the wiring on the DVD player. It usually comes down to one of two things:
1) Audio is on left but right is plugged in (or the other way around)
2) The same audio is on both sides but one is cancelling out the other.

[Rob Lohman]

Is the burner on the same cable with another device? That can (take note of
that word there) lead to some serious problems. I usually have the burner on
a seperate cable (IDE port, you usually only have 2 of these). I once had a
burner on a cable with another CD player (no burner) and it just would not
burn until I removed the player.

These days this should not happen a lot, but it can still exist. It might even
let you burn some if you get "lucky".

Otherwise the motherboard would be a primary concern for me since you've
tested a lot of drives (and they can't all be bad) and the software combination
is working for a lot of people out there.

Or perhaps a faulty cable?

[Greg Boston]

Yeah Lorinda I second what Rob is saying. Try getting the DVD burner on its own IDE channel away from the removable drive. All those drives can't be bad and the software works correctly on your friend's system. Also, the sentence you opened this thread with, "I recently got a new PC..." also gives me cause to suspect the motherboard or how the system was put together. Maybe you can go back to whoever sold you the system and see what help you can get there. If they say it's your software you can remind them that the combination works just fine on someone else's system and so it should on yours as well.

Good luck,

-gb-

[Gian Pablo Villamil]

I recently had a problem with my DVD drive, thought it was defective, instead found this:

Basically Winamp installs the "sonic cd burning" filter driver. A recent Windows Update is not compatible with it - possibly the Microsoft Spyware removal tool sees it as bad, because a similarly named dll has been used by trojans in the past. Anyway, it stops working, and keeps any program that uses the drive from working. Nero seems to do OK because it talks to the drive directly.

To see if you have the problem: right-click "My Computer", select "Manage", select "Device Manager", select "CD/DVD" drives, right-click your drive, select "Properties", go to the "Driver", push the "Driver Details" button.

You should see a short list of drivers, most/all of them with a green check box. See if you have something called "px20hlp.dll" or soemthing like that.

If you do, use regedit, search for a key called "LowerFilters" or "UpperFilters", see if it contains the "px20hlp.dll" filename as a value, and if it does, delete it.

Note: this will disable CD/DVD burning from Winamp and other apps that use the Sonic driver.

In my case, everything started working fine again.

I don't know if this is your problem - but checking the Driver Details for your DVD drive is worthwhile.

[Lorinda Norton]

You guys shoot trouble faster than anybody I know. :)

Okay, so I didn't systematically nail down the problem, but at this point I don't care. It's working!

I disconnected the removable hard drive and re-jumpered for master, etc. When that didn't help I put in the original DVD drive and replaced the ribbon cable. That combination seems to have done the trick.

After this headache goes away I may try hooking up my removable drive (I kind of need one of those) as a slave and see what happens. Then again I may go the USB route and leave well enough alone...

Thank you so much--all of you--for the GREAT help!!!

[Jesse Redman]

If all else fails, try two other options:

1. Download the latest firmware from the drive manufacturer. This updates controller software on the drive.

2. Download the latest drivers from the drive manufacturer. This updates operating system drivers specifically for your drive.

The firmware update may require a "loader" program (also from the manufacturer).

This does sound like another program may have taken control of the drive and interfere with the burning operation.

- Jesse

[Lars Siden]

When this thread is finished we can convert it to a PDF and call it "Dummies guide for DVD/CD errorchecking" - and we'll be millionaires all of us *g*

One thing that strikes me is that you say that you have an external drive that is master on the same IDE channel.

1. External drives are seldom true IDE; oftenly USB/Firewire?
2. If it is a 5.25" Bay, it may be IDE. If so - I'd try to disconnect the bay ...


la la la - I just saw that you got it working! Good job!

Regards,

Lazze

[Lorinda Norton]

HEY now....who you callin' a dummy??? :)

Not to worry; I've known it for years. You're right, though--there is a LOT of really good info here. Too bad it sort of ended up in the wrong forum!

[Edward Troxel]

Lorinda, good to hear you got it all working again. I'm typically of the "leave well enough alone" category and would tend to just use external for the other drives. If you hook it up internally, let us know how it goes and how it affects your burning. At least you know at that point how to "reverse" the process.