MrCodeDude
Lifer
I built my uncle a computer four years ago for under $400, and it was pretty respectable and still is quite a usable system.
AMD XP 1800+ w/ ECS K7S5A (Black PCB version)
512MB PC2100 Corsair Value
GeForce4 MX400
40GB Seagate HD
48x CDRW and 16x DVD-Rom
300W "MaxPower" PSU
Everything has worked great for four years. I was recently in Ohio (I live in California), so I did some stuff for him. We added a wireless PCI card (Airlink101 MIMO XR) and a DVD burner (NEC 3550A, firmware flashed to 1.06). The wireless worked great and the burner was reading discs fine.
I go ahead and install DVD Decrypter (3.5.4.0), AnyDVD (6.0.5.0) and DVD Shrink (3.2.0.15). The movies I brought with me were already copied, so it should be a very quick job. DVD Shrink copies one movie in 30 minutes. I knew something was up, but figured it would work itself out.
I am teaching my uncle how to back up a DVD and we're going through the process, verbatim to what I did earlier, just with a different DVD and we get a BSOD with the error of:
I believe the first error said something about the atapi.sys file, but I can't be sure. I restarted the machine, thinking it was a fluke, we tried again, same BSOD. Reboot once again, not even opening up DVD Shrink, 5 minutes in, the same BSOD. (the BSOD's weren't exactly the same, the last three errors would vary, but the first two (F4 and 03) were the same).
I try just the DVD Rom, blue screen. I try just the Burner, blue screen. I disconnect both, it works fine. I think I've solved the problem. I restart, blue screen. I take out the wireless card, blue screen. At this point, I'm almost where I started and still receiving the blue screen. The only difference this time is that there are no optical drives connected.
I do a system restore to before I came, move the wireless card to a different slot, reconnect both drives, everything is peachy.
I re-install DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink and AnyDVD (all which were uninstalled by the System Restore) and try a new DVD. No BSOD this time. I decide to rip the DVD (which is a copy) through DVD Decrypter, it goes a bit slow, but fine. I then load the image into DVD Shrink (yes, I know all this is unnecessary but I wanted to make sure everything played nice... it didn't). Trying to load the ripped files from DVD Decrypter with DVD Shrink presented the following error:
A quick Google search of the error and I found that if I unchecked the "Burn with NERO" it should sovle it. It didn't. He has a 5.5.x.x version of Nero, so I upgrade it to 6.6.0.14. I still get the same problem.
About an hour later, everything magically begins to work. The DVDs are even being read by DVD Shrink and ripping and burning. The only problem was the rip rate was horrible, on a pre-ripped DVD it was averaging 1300 KB/s. The good thing is that everything was working. And it stayed this way for two days.
Until this morning, about 4 hours before my flight, my uncle wants to review ripping and burning a DVD and we're once again presented with the original BSOD. The good part is this is the last time we saw the BSOD. Another good thing is that both the DVDRom and Burner are now ripping at 6000 - 8000KB/s. But now, everytime I tried to rip a DVD (even ones that worked the day prior), it would get up to halfway completed and then spit out: "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."
This time I noticed that during the ripping process, the drive would be spinning fine, until for some reason, it would stop and then just almost shut off. The drive was still powered up, but the disc just halted midway for no reason.
I took the NEC 3550A home with me to make sure that there is nothing wrong with it, but what does everything think could be the problem? I'm now halfway across the United States and although I might see him later again this month (for the Ohio State v. Cincinnati game, depending on scheduling), but right now I'm pretty sure it has to be one of the following:
1. The NEC 3550A drive
2. The IDE Cable
3. The PSU
And I doubt it, but possibly the wireless card.
I did Memtest 86+ 3.2 overnight, there were no errors. I checked for leaky capacitors, I didn't see any.
Is there anything I'm overlooking? I'm really mad at myself that I couldn't diagnose this faster. I had originally put off the PSU as the source because I assumed (probably incorrectly) that the DVD burner wouldn't have a much more significant power draw than a regular CD burner.
I'm sending him two working IDE cables, an Ultra 500W PSU (overkill, but I have about 4 spares) and once I test the 3550A, either it or a similar 16x burner to him tomorrow. I'm just thinking that if neither the new cables or PSU rectifies the problem, what else could be causing it.
AMD XP 1800+ w/ ECS K7S5A (Black PCB version)
512MB PC2100 Corsair Value
GeForce4 MX400
40GB Seagate HD
48x CDRW and 16x DVD-Rom
300W "MaxPower" PSU
Everything has worked great for four years. I was recently in Ohio (I live in California), so I did some stuff for him. We added a wireless PCI card (Airlink101 MIMO XR) and a DVD burner (NEC 3550A, firmware flashed to 1.06). The wireless worked great and the burner was reading discs fine.
I go ahead and install DVD Decrypter (3.5.4.0), AnyDVD (6.0.5.0) and DVD Shrink (3.2.0.15). The movies I brought with me were already copied, so it should be a very quick job. DVD Shrink copies one movie in 30 minutes. I knew something was up, but figured it would work itself out.
I am teaching my uncle how to back up a DVD and we're going through the process, verbatim to what I did earlier, just with a different DVD and we get a BSOD with the error of:
I believe the first error said something about the atapi.sys file, but I can't be sure. I restarted the machine, thinking it was a fluke, we tried again, same BSOD. Reboot once again, not even opening up DVD Shrink, 5 minutes in, the same BSOD. (the BSOD's weren't exactly the same, the last three errors would vary, but the first two (F4 and 03) were the same).
I try just the DVD Rom, blue screen. I try just the Burner, blue screen. I disconnect both, it works fine. I think I've solved the problem. I restart, blue screen. I take out the wireless card, blue screen. At this point, I'm almost where I started and still receiving the blue screen. The only difference this time is that there are no optical drives connected.
I do a system restore to before I came, move the wireless card to a different slot, reconnect both drives, everything is peachy.
I re-install DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink and AnyDVD (all which were uninstalled by the System Restore) and try a new DVD. No BSOD this time. I decide to rip the DVD (which is a copy) through DVD Decrypter, it goes a bit slow, but fine. I then load the image into DVD Shrink (yes, I know all this is unnecessary but I wanted to make sure everything played nice... it didn't). Trying to load the ripped files from DVD Decrypter with DVD Shrink presented the following error:
A quick Google search of the error and I found that if I unchecked the "Burn with NERO" it should sovle it. It didn't. He has a 5.5.x.x version of Nero, so I upgrade it to 6.6.0.14. I still get the same problem.
About an hour later, everything magically begins to work. The DVDs are even being read by DVD Shrink and ripping and burning. The only problem was the rip rate was horrible, on a pre-ripped DVD it was averaging 1300 KB/s. The good thing is that everything was working. And it stayed this way for two days.
Until this morning, about 4 hours before my flight, my uncle wants to review ripping and burning a DVD and we're once again presented with the original BSOD. The good part is this is the last time we saw the BSOD. Another good thing is that both the DVDRom and Burner are now ripping at 6000 - 8000KB/s. But now, everytime I tried to rip a DVD (even ones that worked the day prior), it would get up to halfway completed and then spit out: "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."
This time I noticed that during the ripping process, the drive would be spinning fine, until for some reason, it would stop and then just almost shut off. The drive was still powered up, but the disc just halted midway for no reason.
I took the NEC 3550A home with me to make sure that there is nothing wrong with it, but what does everything think could be the problem? I'm now halfway across the United States and although I might see him later again this month (for the Ohio State v. Cincinnati game, depending on scheduling), but right now I'm pretty sure it has to be one of the following:
1. The NEC 3550A drive
2. The IDE Cable
3. The PSU
And I doubt it, but possibly the wireless card.
I did Memtest 86+ 3.2 overnight, there were no errors. I checked for leaky capacitors, I didn't see any.
Is there anything I'm overlooking? I'm really mad at myself that I couldn't diagnose this faster. I had originally put off the PSU as the source because I assumed (probably incorrectly) that the DVD burner wouldn't have a much more significant power draw than a regular CD burner.
I'm sending him two working IDE cables, an Ultra 500W PSU (overkill, but I have about 4 spares) and once I test the 3550A, either it or a similar 16x burner to him tomorrow. I'm just thinking that if neither the new cables or PSU rectifies the problem, what else could be causing it.
