DVD thinks certain populated disks are blank

Hawke

Obliviot
I have a small problem at the moment, for some reason, my DVD-RAM drive (NEC ND-4571A) thinks that some populated disks (backups of my mothers digital photos from my old system) are blank. A good few weeks back, I used the same DVD-RAM drive read them no problem at all, and a few days back, I managed to write an ISO to a DVD-RW disk to install openSUSE along side Windows XP and it worked fine.

Initially I thought the disks were broken somehow, but I tested them on my laptop, and they work fine - another odd thing (going back to the PC in question) is when I start up Windows XP, the drive reads the disks fine, but when I ejected it and put it back in/put a simular disks in, Windows saw this as a blank disk again.

I used CDburnerXP to burn the disks
I am not sure if this is caused by Service Pack 3, I managed to recover the data off the disks with ISObuster though, ISObuster marked my files on the drive as corrupt but transfered perfectly well to the hard disk and they turned out fine. This is worrying me a bit, could this be caused by Service Pack 3 for Windows XP or is this the first signs of my drive dieing?

This seems to be only happening to DVD-RW media
 

Merlin

The Tech Wizard
Hmmmmm
Could be the driver that reads the disk, maybe uninstall and then reinstall, or maybe just an updated driver.
I had this happen with one DVD drive from one machine to another, I just took the drivers out and reinstalled
HIH

Merlin
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
What Merlin said, sounds like a driver or software issue.

Have you uninstalled any drive or disc software recently? What sort of file types are they? ISOs? If you just installed SP3, I'd try uninstalling and reinstalling the software you usually use to read and work with the file types on those discs.
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
That's an odd one... but I've run into similar issues like that before. I agree with Merlin and Kougar, it's probably a driver issue, since it reads the disc after initial boot.
 

Hawke

Obliviot
There was no software drivers included with the DVD-RAM drive (I'm assuming you mean software drivers), but I haven't updated its firmware, I, also I have looked at the procedures of updating the DVD-RAM firmware that came with the Zip file and it does confuse me a bit (It is copied and pasted from the README file)

Pls note following instructions for update procedure:

Connect drive to secondary IDE channel as Master

Disconnect all slave hardware from IDE secondary Master

Use standard UDMA-2 IDE cable

Update in Windows "Safe Mode"

Under Windows 2000 & XP login as administrator

Update without DMA mode, under Windows XP & 2000 in the device manager - "IDE ATA/ ATAPI controllers", you can switch from DMA to PIO mode

Disconnect all external USB/ FireWire devices.

Deactivate virusscanners, active desktop programs and packetwriting agents

Do not turn off power during the updating process.


Note: Warranty will be lost during false updating procedure, especially unofficial modified firmwares were used before.
In such cases we could not offer you a solution any more. You have to repair it by cost then.

Problem is, my motherboard has no secondary IDE/PATA channel, only one

One thing I must stress that when I first booted up my PC after it was rebuilt over a month, I never had this issue with the DVD-RAM drive, so it is definetly not the motherboard at fault here...
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
I do not mean the DVD drive firmware or drivers. I was talking about the software you use to read/open the files you are putting on the disc?
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
I think the first thing I'd do is go into the device manager and uninstall it. You can get there from Start > Right-Click Computer and select Properties, then select Device Manager. Right-click the ODD, uninstall it, then reboot. It will reinstall on the next boot, hopefully fixing what it broke before.
 

Hawke

Obliviot
Sorry for the lack of my reply - I just uninstalled my DVD-RAM drive and rebooted Windows, it is working a bit better, but I used my mothers DVD/CD lens cleaner (a CD with fibers on it) and it did make some difference, the DVD-RW seems to be reading now (with a hickup now and again)

Thanks for your help
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Good to hear! You must really abuse your drives to have one get the sensor so dirty ;-)
 
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