What's wrong with my Lite-On Combo SOHC-5232K (CD-RW/DVD)

[mitchafi]

Well when my cheap memorex CD-burner died after about 2 years I replaced it with a Lite-On combo seen here: Combo Drive. This thing cannot burn a CD for the life of it. A majority of the time Nero gives me a "burn process failed" message after a while and on the off chance that a burn is actually successful it takes much longer than my 32x Nec 2500A. This thing is also loud as hell and the drive bay was very loose when I got it, but that is besides the point. Is this thing just a piece of junk? Could there be a setting I have enabled/disabled that is causing this?

 

[mechBgon]

In Device Manager, expand the ATA/IDE controller listing, double-click each controller, and check the Advanced tab to see if the drive is using PIO mode (bad, switch it to UDMA if it is).

 

[mitchafi]

They are both on "DMA if available" and under current transfer mode it says Ultra DMA Mode with a number at the end.

 

[mechBgon]

If you haven't done so, update Nero to the latest version: http://www.ahead.de

 

[mitchafi]

Burn succeeded after I updated, although it did freeze up for a good 45 seconds at 5%. I'm going to burn some more stuff to make sure it wasn't a fluke. Thanks for the help Mech, I always neglect to take the most obvious troubleshooting methods

 

[mitchafi]

Looks like it was a fluke. It won't even start burning with Alcohol 120...stays at 0% for a while and then gives a weird error but the CD is still fine. Now Nero is stuck at 8% trying to burn an audio CD. 5 minutes elapsed and counting. Any other things I should try before RMA'ing this badboy back to newegg.com?

 

[mitchafi]

About that burn stuck at 8%...eventually it unfroze and finished, but it took 20 minutes total for the burn @ 52X speed. Completely unacceptable as far as i'm concerned.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: mitchafi
About that burn stuck at 8%...eventually it unfroze and finished, but it took 20 minutes total for the burn @ 52X speed. Completely unacceptable as far as i'm concerned.

Wow yeah I'd say so....on my 48x it takes me around 7 minutes to burn a full cd and that is when i enable "simulation" to make sure there is nothing wrong

 

[Yanagi]

yeah. somethings definately wrong. even my 24x lite-on burner burns a full cd in about 4 minutes.

 

[eplebnista]

You might try updating the firmware.

 

[waitman]

Sounds like the problem i had with my Lite-on when I need to defrag. Has happened to me a couple times

 

[mitchafi]

I dunno what the deal is but when I click on the link to download CO52NK0A.zip for my combo drive it just seems to refresh the page. I tried to save target as but it doesn't work.

 

[eplebnista]

The CO52NK0A.zip download link works for me in IE6. When I left click on the link, the page reacts like it is being refreshed and a few seconds later I get the normal download box from windows to pop up and ask if I want to save the CO52NK0A.zip file.

 

[mitchafi]

Got it using IE (was using firefox before). Now let's see if it actually helps. For some reason I don't think it will.

 

[mitchafi]

After flashing to the latest firmware I burned 3 audio CD's successfully in a row, in a timely manner, although each got stuck at 9% for about a minute. The fourth audio CD I attempted to burn got stuck at 9% as well...but this time it was stuck for a good 10 minutes and the burn ended up completing successfully after about 20 minutes. I've concluded that the new firmware did not help. Also, I forgot to mention that the drive is very loud when burning, and makes many "spinning-up" type noises as well as others. These noises don't stop when it is temporarily stuck and the orange activity light is always on as well. Getting ready to RMA this sucker.

 

[Viper96720]

updated Windows ASPI? Tried different media different burn speeds?

 

[mitchafi]

I don't have any other media...I have about 150 Memorex CD-R's. Perhaps I'll buy a few of another brand. I tried at 48x and was having the same problems. I actually don't know what Windows ASPI is so i'll look into that now.

 

[Viper96720]

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/drivers_by_product.jsp?cat=%2FProduct%2FASPI-4.70

Communicates with the cd burning software.

 

[Viper96720]

What speed is the CD's rated for? Try a 40x burn

 

[mitchafi]

Is the installation just supposed to be the flash of a command window? It told me to run install.bat with xp32 on the end and when I did this a CMD window flashed real quick and that was it.

Edit: 52x Multi-Speed