Screw you HP, but thanks for the free upgrade.

[YBS1]

Recently my DVD740i burner stopped burning and/or recognizing DVD+R DL discs (newer versions of Verbatims to be specific). Several things led me to believe this was a firmware write strategy issue, as previous updates were to address this very thing. Several emails to HP "support" detailing the problem exactly went completely unanswered, thus I went looking to fix the issue myself. Knowing that the 740 and 840 are the same hardware wise, I tried to flash directly to the 840 firmware, as I expected this failed as the flash utility checked for the correct drive.

Onto attempt number two...Doing some digging showed the drive to be a rebadged LG GSA-4166b. Decided to try flashing the drive to version 1.02 of the LG firmware, this also failed for the same reason as listed above. Found an earlier 1.00 version of the firmware, and bingo! We're in business. This flash utility didn't care that there was a drive mismatch. So by using WinRAR and unpackaging the 840i firmware .exe I was able to use the flash utility to flash the .bin file for the 840i. Success!

Everything is working fine now and I have DVD-RAM support as a side benefit. Just thought I'd pass this info along to anyone with a 740i. Hp won't give you any support but at least they will give you a "free new drive". 🙂 (My drive showed as a 740b in device manager, my understanding is there are multiple models so this may not work on other versions of the 740i)

 

[corkyg]

That is very interesting. I have the DVD740e version (external, USB 2) w/Lightscribe. Have not had a bit of trouble buring DVD+r ro CDR Lightscribes and regular disks. Have not tried DL's - but really have no need for that capacity.

When that need arises, I will recall your note. I saved it in my tech archives. Thanks! 🙂