Ultrabay CD-R/DVD R/W drive problems (no disk in Drive D:)h

[westsailor]

I have a T30 and two Ultrabay CD/DVD drives:

1. IBM GCC-4240 CD-RW/DVD
2. LG GWA-4082N CD-RW/DVD R/W

the CD-RW/DVD (player only)

- I've burned CD's on this drive no problem
- It plays some CD-R's but not all burned on other 'puters (I attribute this to media brand)
- DVD-R are not recognized (no disk in drive D:)
- original DVD's play no problem
- original CD's play no problem

The CD R/W/DVD R/W (both CD & DVD burner)
- CD-R's give an error message "D:\ is not accessible, incorrect function"
- original CD's play no problem
- original DVDs says 'no disk in drive D'
- I've burned DVD's (using both DVD+R & DVD R/W) but when trying to read them it says 'Please insert disk in Drive D:). I've verified the disks are readable on other 'puters.

Device manager says both drives are working fine. I have VSO inspector (VSO software) that finds both drives, reports all relevant info correctly.

I've searched the net and found lots of people having problems with XP not recognizing DVD R media. Microsoft admits it had (?) a problem. Something about XP looking for 16 bit frames and DVD R media being recorded in 32 bit frames. Anyway, XP service pack 2 supposedly fixed the problem. I'm good at keeping XP auto-updated so I "assume" I have all the relevent updates that are included in SP2 (since SP2 is not an update option for me).

Another solution offered on the net was to uninstall the drive via device manager, reboot and find new hardware. I also uninstalled the (secondary) IDE channel. No help.

I'm thinking it's a software problem. Just yesterday I was able to burn/read DVD data (using cute CD/DVD burner). I had to futz around to get it to work, not sure what I did but suddenly I was able to burn a few data DVD's. Then in the middle of my session it quit recognizing any medai was in the drive.

Wierd huh?

Has anyone had any problems reading DVD recordable media in their thinkpads?

Anyone know what the problem might be and a solution?

[ryengineer]

snip......Has anyone had any problems reading DVD recordable media in their thinkpads? Anyone know what the problem might be and a solution?

I have seen similar problem like this on thinkpads. I don't know for sure what causes it, but the only reason I came across was, high end machines like thinkpads are picky on the DVD media you use with them. Switching to a good brand of DVD disks might help you.

[rkawakami]

Recently I took a look at a group of GCC-4240N drives that were labeled with the 08K9868 FRU. Those particular ones had a problem with reading DVD+ media (DVD-ROM and DVD- were fine). Windows did the same thing you describe: inserting a disk and attempting to access the D: drive in DOS resulted in a "The parameter is incorrect" message. A firmware upgrade allowed my drives to read "+" media, even though DVDInfoPro said that the drive did not support it.

As VSO Inspector seems to do the same thing as DVDInfoPro, what does it report as the firmware version of your GCC-4240 drive? It probably won't hurt to try the 0214 firmware upgrade available from here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 62296.html

It may also be possible that there is some contamination on the lens. A cotton-tip swab dipped in a small amount of isopropyl alcohol can clean that up.

[westsailor]

thanks for the excellent info.

I am aware of quality issues with different types of media. Here's a good site rating various DVD media vendors I often refer to:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm

I'm in Central America so I don't always have much of a choice for media but TDK seems to be readily available (which is on top of the list) and that's what I've been using.

I read your other post about the GCC-4240N's and sure enough, I have the TYPE IMB0 and "E-H022-02-0964(B) version with firmware version 211.

Since VSO Inspector reported both drives as DVD+R & DVD-R compatible I haven't worried much about the two formats. Could be one of my problems as the last batch of TDK's I bought is DVD+R.

Definately going to update the firmware to 214.

[westsailor]

Hmm.. now I don't know what the **** is going on.

I D/L'd fwod08.iso and since the instructions referred to Record Now! I even D/L'd that just to make sure.

Record Now! doesn't even SEE any drives and can't find any.

VSO Inspector finds the drive & (TDK) CD/R media just fine.

So I just "burned" fwod08.iso to a CD/R using Cute CD/DVD burner. Although everything seemed to look fine during the burn there is nothing on the disk.

I also tried simply 'dragging/dropping' fwod08.iso onto the drive. Windows appeared to have 'burned' it but again, nothing on the disk after the burn.

And my other (CDR - DVD burner) isn't recognizing CD/R media at all.

ARrrrgh!

Thing is, I wish I could just determine 100% I have a bad drive(s) or 100% it's an 'XP has problems recognizing rewriteable media' issue, or type of media or the burning S/W I'm using (or some/all of the above).

I CAN futz around and get them to work... if at least intermittently. It's just I try so many things to get them to work I can't remember exactly what it is I did when suddenly, voila! (for a while anyway)