It happen a couple of days ago. It has been a while since I recorded anything on my LiteOn DVD Writer optical drive, so I was surprised and a little bit annoyed that it failed to record my data to a Sony DVD+R discs. And to make matters worse, it failed on me three times!

You can imagine how annoying it could be! I tried two burning softwares; the first one is ImgBurn, which is a freeware DVD/CD burning solution that I just tried. I forget what exactly the error was, but it just won’t burn my data. Since it was my first time trying the software, I tried using another software just to make sure.

The second software that I tried was Nero 7 Express which comes bundled with my DVD drive. As it happened, Nero failed me too, so I was starting to think that the problem was not with the software. Fortunately, this time I remember to take note of the problem which is “DMA-driver error, CRC error” in Nero.

So I tried searching the internet for a solution. The ones that I found range from trying a newer version of Nero, slowing the burn speed, switching the DVD drive master/slave setting, to checking the DVD writer drive’s cabling; so much for a solution to prevent DMA-driver error, CRC error.

Now, since I tried another software first, I don’t really think trying another burning software is going to help me. Since I already tried using 2,4x and 4x burning speed, I don’t think that the second solution is going to help. As for the third solution, somehow I just can’t imagine why a DVD drive’s master/slave setting can affect burning, but the last solution is reasonable enough to try, although I did find out that my cabling is still fine.

At this point there’s only one solution that I can think of, and that is updating the firmware for my Lite-On DVDRW LH-18A1P. So I downloaded the specific firmware upgrade for my specific drive. The file is in .exe format and it runs without any problems. After that it prompted me to restart my PC, and so I did.

When I logged in, it seems Windows considered the drive as a new drive, because the pop up notification told me so. It installed perfectly though, so no complaint really. After that, comes the moment of truth, and that is trying to burn another DVD. I opt for ImgBurn for the task, and this time it runs smoothly, without any problems whatsoever. In the end, I got myself a quite handy experience and a newly burned DVD disc which runs nicely.

So, anytime you are stuck with a similar problem as mine, you could try upgrading your DVD drive’s firmware and hopefully it will solve your problem. Just be careful though, if the firmware upgrade failed, you might end up with a broken DVD/CD Writer drive, so try at your own risk.

Links you might find useful regarding the problem:

• ImgBurn’s Burning Software’s website.
• Nero Burning ROM’s website.
• About Firmware on Wikipedia.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 12:38 am and is filed under Technical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.