Sucess with Panasonic DVD-RAM driver for GSA-4083N

[Christoph]

Hi folks,

I just got a T60 with the "Hitachi-LG model GSA-4083N" Multi Drive and want to share my findings concerning Drag and Drop support for DVD-RAM Media with UDF Format.

My Thinkpad came installed with the Record Now Software including DLA from Sonic to support DVD-RAM Media.

I am running XP SP2 and had massive problems to read a UDF (2.0) formatted DVD-RAM. When I tried to open a folder on the disk Explorer just froze and I had to do a reboot. After I deinstalled DLA My system worked fine again and I was able to read the disk without any problems but obviously writing to UDF was no longer possible.

Solution:
The BlueRay/DVD-RAM driver from Panasonic from February 2007 worked like a charm on my GSA-4083N Multi Drive. Much better and faster than DLA. I can now choose between FAT, UDF 1.5, UDF2.0 and UDF2.5 when I format the disk.
The only problem is that you have to convince the driver to install with a non Panasonic drive.

Here is what you have to do:
Get the DVD Driver from here:
http://panasonic.co.jp/pcc/products/dri ... 301NEN.exe

for other OS versions look here:
http://panasonic.co.jp/pcc/products/en/ ... index.html

and this tool from here:
ftp://ftp.externet.hu/pub/mirror/sac/pack/i6comp02.zip

When you run XPDrv5301NEN.exe, it extracts the installation files to C:\Documents and Settings\<your Username>\Local Settings\Temp\byeB.tmp\Disk1, (where "byeB.tmp", may be "byeE.tmp", "bye7.tmp", etc, you get the idea, the character after "bye" is hex digit) and runs the installation program from there. Then message box appears, that says "Error: Cannot get drive.", because we haven't Panasonic drives. Before you click "OK" and exit the installation you need to copy "Disk1" dir to C:\ . In "Disk1" there is a file DATA1.cab and also setup.exe file. The next few steps:

1) Extract and copy i6comp.exe from i6comp02.zip to "Disk1"

2) run "Command Prompt" (Start->Run->Open->"cmd"->OK)

3) type "cd C:\Disk1>"

4) type "i6comp x data1.cab"

Now you can find file "DVDDrive.ini" in "Disk1" dir.

5) Open DVDDrive.ini in Notepad and change line "DriveNameCheckMode=1" to "DriveNameCheckMode=0", save and exit Notepad

6) type "i6comp r data1.cab DVDDrive.ini" to replace DVDDrive.ini in DATA1.cab with our hacked version

7) Run "setup.exe" and install the driver.

[sugo]

I have been using the Panasonic driver on a panasonic dvd-ram drive on my T42 with great success as well.

[Dodge DeBoulet]

I'd be very interested to hear if anyone has attempted this with the Matshita UJ-842.

[sugo]

It should work. The panasonic dvd-ram driver isn't tied to a particular model.

[Dodge DeBoulet]

A comment on the OP's instructions:

If you happen to have WinRAR, you can use it to open the .exe file and extract the installation files to whatever directory you want, rather than having to track them down in the %TEMP% directory.

Unfortunately, WinRAR doesn't work on the Data1.cab file; it appears to be in a non-standard format.