Toshiba SD-R5372 - reads OK, no write & no erase

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whftherb

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May 13, 2006
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Hello. I'm new to this forum. Have Windows XP Pro SP2 - completely updated - Athlon 64 3400+, 512 MB RAM, Toshiba R5372 DVD/CD burner. System I built back in Aug 05 from all new parts/perifs... Having a whole lot of trouble recently with the optical drive not completing a write and not recognizing blank media. It will read and play a commercial DVD and a commercial CD (music). The drive was working fine until recently about 2 weeks ago. Back about 4 months ago, I flashed it to incorporate the latest firmware obtained from the Toshiba web (firmware rev:TU56). Again, after flashing it, it was working fine for a good long time. The basic symptom is: I stick a blank DVD R/W or CD-R or CD-RW in, the drive spins up, the activity light winks about 20 times then it quiets. Go to copy a file in Explorer (IMAPI) and Win reports there's no disc. Go to write something in Nero and right at the end of the burn, I get "An error has occurred". Erasing a DVD R/W or CD-R/W Windows or Nero and it seems to go through but then insert it back in and try a write and I get the "disk is not empty or is not a writable disk... Insert an empty disk". Tried three diff brands of media. I do notice that upon inserting a blank, after spin-up the disk icon in Explorer will change from DVD R-W Drive to CD ROM Drive on it's own.

In looking around, I see in device mgr somehow I have picked up extra Primary and Secondary IDE Channels. I don't know when nor how this might have occurred. IOW, what I see listed in Device Mgr under "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" is:

Primary IDE Channel
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Channel Controller
VIA Busmaster IDE Controller

I don't think this is right and I further believe this causes a "conflict" and thus may be the root of my problem with the optical drive. The single hard drive on the primary channel runs OK and seems to be unaffected. The optical drive is the sole/only device on the secondary channel and is optioned as the "Master". As I said, this was working fine with both the old and newer firmware. Should I work on removing the duplicate Primaries and Secondaries? Question is which ones should be removed/disabled and, of course, how exactly do you do that?

More: In the list above (disregarding the last two for the moment), on the individual Properties panel, the first primary entry cannot be disabled, but the other three can because the tabs are present to do so. I am also concerned that by uninstalling any or all of them, Windows won't fire off and then I'll really be sunk. The second and fourth entries do have a "Resources" tab listed, the first and third do not (and therefore you can't see what IRQ they're sitting on for example). I have already tried "uninstalling" the first and third entries but they just returned on reboot plus doing this almost messed up everything too with a bunch of rather serious souding PNP error messages about service manager not functioning and device could not be found.

Can I please get some opinions on how should I proceed here? I'd like to get my DVD/CD burner back!!! Thanks, folks!
 
Hi whftherb, welcome to the [H].

First, the obvious: Have you tried the drive on another computer?

Also, which motherboard do you have? I'm assuming a Via-chipset based S754 board?
 
Hi TechHead -

I actually went the other way and bought an all new and different brand of drive at Staples the other day. A BenQ with almost the same R/W specs as the Toshi. I inserted it, optioned it, started the system and XP found new hardware and informed me that everything was OK. But, same symptom - does not recognize or work with CD R/W media. My desk is piled high with blank media!

This is an ABit MB with a VIA chipset. I asked over at the ABit site about the duplicate IDE channels and they convinced me this config is expected as two extra IDE slots are needed to house the SATA features. So, that's not it. I also contacted the VIA user group and installed the latest Hyperion 4in1 IDE driver set. No luck there. The MB is an AV8 K8T800Pro.

Here's a thought maybe you could comment on. CD R/W technology depends a lot on so-called "packet writing" schema. Is it at all possible that somehow I've flumoxed this little built-in packet writing module in XP? I'm thinking this way - if the software support isn't available, how's the drive to know what to do with the disk. Hence the light's staying full solid lit and not being able to copy/erase or even recognize a CD R/W, looks like the drive is locked out, to me, points to "no software, no workie". What do you think about that idea? I believe this built-in was purchased by MS from Adaptec, now Roxio. BTW, you can't install any of the Roxio packet writing standalone software packages - Windows won't permit you to apply it for "stability" reasons.

Any way you know of to check the viability of the native built-in Windows packet writing software.
 
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