CD-RW Drivers? (1 Viewer)

[Todd Stout]

I have had an ongoing problem with my CD-RW drive since upgrading to Windows XP from ME several months ago. See this thread for more details:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...threadid=72165
After trying just about everything without any sort of resolution, my friend suggested that I try using the CD-RW drivers from ME on my XP machine. I'd also like to try this on my Windows 2000 machine here at work since it has the same issues as my XP machine at home.
My question is, does Windows ME (or even 98SE) use the same three files for CD-RW and CD-ROM operation as Windows XP and Windows 2000?
My Windows 2000 machine is using the following three driver files for both the CD-RW drive and the CD-ROM:
C:WINNTSystem32DRIVERScdrom.sys
C:WINNTSystem32DRIVERSredbook.sys
C:WINNTSystem32storprop.dll
Would I be safe in just renaming the current files and then pasting older Windows ME or 98 drivers into those locations for testing purposes?
Thank you.

 

[John_Berger]

My question is, does Windows ME (or even 98SE) use the same three files for CD-RW and CD-ROM operation as Windows XP and Windows 2000?

I wouldn't count on it. Even if the files are the same, they're for completely different architectures. Win ME is based on Windows 95 technology and XP is based on Windows 2000/NT technology. For the most part, they're not interchangable.

But let's narrow down the scope. What problems are you having? Are they a result of using one application? If so which one and have you downloaded the newest updates for it?

 

[Todd Stout]

I'm having problems burning redbook audio CDs. All CD-R discs that I burned under Windows ME played (and continue to play) fine in audio CD players. Since upgrading to Windows XP Home, every CD-R disc skips in several different audio CD players (but most importantly, in my truck where I listen to my CD-R discs most often). The CD-Rs will skip in one place during one listening and then skip somewhere else completely during subsequent listenings.
The problem isn't software specific since this happens using both Easy CD Creator 5.02d (with XP patch applied) and then later with Nero Burning Rom 5.5 (I recently updated it to the most current version). I started with Easy CD after upgrading to XP the first time and then used Nero after clean installing XP (the second install of XP on that PC). I have tried just about everything imaginable to fix this but I'm sure there may be other things to try.
I just got a new PC here at work (2.4ghz P4 Dell Optiplex GX260) that is running Windows 2000 and it does the same thing to audio CD-Rs. I tried burning two after work the day I got it and this one burns discs that do exactly the same thing. The only thing that this PC seems to have in common with the one at home is they are both Dells running OEM CD-RW drives. The one at home is running an LG Electronics CED-8120B and this one here at work is a Samsung SM-332B. I've looked for new firmware on the Dell support Web site but they don't offer any. The LG Electronics site has newer firmware for "LG branded drives" but they don't recommend using it in OEM drives. The update supposedly addresses XP compatibilty issues.
http://us.lgservice.com/ (under Product Support > S/W updates)
I noticed that both XP and 2000 are lacking ASPI drivers. I have tried installing ASPI on both machines but it has no effect on either PC.
A friend of mine suggested trying the ME drivers under XP to see if that fixes it. He also said if that fails, I could always create a dual boot PC with both XP and ME (but it looks like I'd have to install XP yet a third time if I do that).
I just think it's really strange that a drive will work flawlessly under ME and have problems under XP.
I'm wondering if this is an issue with XP/2000, an issue with Dell PCs, an issue with Dell OEM CD-RW firmware, or something else?
I'm open for any suggestions.

 

[Max Leung]

Possibly a hardware issue that coincidentally cropped up at the same time you installed XP?
Is the CD-RW drive on its own IDE cable, not shared with any other drive?
Is DMA on or off for that drive? Try toggling it to the opposite value to see if it has any effect.
Have you tried turning on or off burnproof?
Have you tried burning at 1x speed?
Have you tried swapping the IDE cable with another one?
Have you tried ripping the copied CD with EAC? EAC will let you know if there are problems with the disc, as it attempts to make a perfect rip by using error-correction techniques.
For that matter, what program do you use to make copies? It's possible that there is a problem READING information from the CD, possibly resulting in corrupt data. This can occur in some motherboard chipsets, where data being read at high-speed gets corrupted as it is transferred from the IDE bus. Many VIA-chipset users have had this problem, particularly when trying to install computer games. The files copied from the game CD are corrupted with no warning whatsoever. Check the Dell website for updated motherboard drivers or BIOSes.
A corrupted audio CD may play on some players, but others may not handle the corrupted data very well and skip or blank out the corrupted sound samples.
I have two PCs with XP installed, one a Pentium 3 (with VIA chipset...it had problems until I got the fixed drivers) and another an AMD (nForce chipset). I've burned well over 100 CDs, not a single coaster except when my Plextor overheated a couple of times. My Pentium 3 was upgraded from Windows ME, while my AMD machine was installed from scratch.
Man, I can't believe you're still having problems. :frowning:
Time for a completely new computer?

 

[Chad Ellinger]

Just to help you troubleshoot. I would highly recommend you NOT replace the 2000/XP drivers with ME drivers. Since 2000/XP is an entirely different codebase from Windows 9x, I can imagine this would only cause more problems.

As for ASPI drivers, installing those won't really help you if you are using Nero. Nero uses its own ASPI driver in the Nero install directory (wnaspi32.dll I think). If you have access to an XP-compatible version of Easy CD Creator, you might try installing the latest ASPI drivers from Adaptec, then installing ECD.

Can you backup your current firmware somehow? I'd go ahead and update the CDRW firmware, especially since it seems to address XP issues. Lots of vendors put out warnings about drivers and firmware for OEM drives, mostly because they won't provide support for OEM drives. Often the hardware is identical.

 

[Todd Stout]

Max:
The CD-RW drive shares an IDE cable with a DVD-ROM drive. I set the CD-RW drive as master and the DVD-ROM as slave (both on the secondary IDE channel) instead of cable select as it originally was set.

Both devices on that IDE channel have DMA enabled.

I do not believe that this drive (OEM LG Electronics CED-8120B) has any sort of burnproof feature built in, just a large buffer.

This drive will not allow me to burn any slower than 4x. I do have the problem burning at 4x, 8x, and 12x.

I have not tried swapping IDE cables. Maybe I should try that...

I am now using EAC (I love EAC, thanks for the tip) to rip uncompressed WAV files from my CDs and then use Nero to burn my compilations. I haven't tried ripping a copy of a burned CD and analyzing it yet. I'll give that a try.

I think it's rather odd that the new Dell Optiplex GX260 that I got at work a few weeks ago has exactly the same problem. That PC isn't even running XP. It was wiped of XP and Windows 2000 was installed. It's even running a different drive, it's a Samsung combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive. This along with the problems my friend is having with his Dell laptop running XP, is what has me believing that it's a Dell problem. Maybe with the firmware that they use in their CD-RW drives or maybe some other system configuration issue. Their tech support is of no help at all though.

I'd just go and buy a new CD-RW drive if I knew it was going to solve the problem. I'm just afraid that I'll still have a problem after buying that shiny new Plextor that I've been eying.

Chad:
After doing a little research, I now see that the drivers used for CD-RW drives on the various flavors of Windows are a lot of the time completely different. Oh well, it was worth checking into I guess.

I'd love to try that firmware upgrade that I found on the LG Electronics Web site. I spoke with someone at LG and after explaining my situation to him he told me not to try it. The guy asked me how many buttons my OEM drive had on the front and I told him one. He said the LG branded version had two buttons on the font and this firmware may actually kill the drive. That's what has me nervous. I don't know if there is any way to backup the firmware.

What a headache...

FYI - here are the drivers that are listed for the LG CD-RW drive on my Windows XP PC:

C:WINDOWSSystem32DRIVERSbsstor.sys
C:WINDOWSSystem32DRIVERScdrom.sys
C:WINDOWSSystem32DRIVERSimapi.sys
C:WINDOWSSystem32DRIVERSMxlW2k.sys
C:WINDOWSSystem32DRIVERSredbook.sys
C:WINDOWSSystem32storprop.dll

The bsstor.sys driver is listed as being provided by B.H.A. Co., Ltd. and not Microsoft. The MxlW2k.sys file is listed as being provided by MusicMatch... huh, I wonder if that has anything to do with the problem? Probably not, but you never know.

 

[Mark Hsieh]

Try all the tips that Max suggested. If none of those work, its probably a hardware issue. I have XP and 2000 on seperate computers (both Dells, one workstation and one laptop) and neither burn cd's that skip.
You can always try disabling the ASPI service that XP (not sure if 2k runs it) runs at startup. I've got mine disabled and Nero 5.5 installed and it seems to work fine.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

XP has its own CD burning function, and of course it's lame. I wouldn't doubt it if they're the cause of the problem, interfering with EZCD and Nero.
Here's a link to the registry key that turns that crap off.
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/979/

 

[Todd Stout]

Mark:
How do I turn off ASPI in XP?

Wayne:
I'll try turning off the built in CD burning functionality. I'm not quite sure how to do what they are describing at that link though. I've never added anything to the Windows registry before, just browsed though it. I'll do some more reading and hopefully figure it out.

Than you guys... I appreciate the suggestions.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

Be careful in the registry. You can break things in there as easily as you can fix things. But using Regedit is pretty easy.

 

[Todd Stout]

I added the registry entry as the article described but that didn't fix the problem either. It was definately worth a shot though.

I think that maybe I need to try a new drive. I'll have to check out the return policies of some of the local stores in case a new one has the same problem on this PC.

 

[Todd Stout]

I tried an experiment at work using my Dell Optiplex GX260 (running Windows 2000). I connected a 3 year old Backpack CD-Rewriter to the LPT port. The drive in the Backpack unit is a Mitsumi CR-4804TE 4X CD-RW drive. I burned audio CD-R discs from two CD images that I had stored on this PC (one on a Memorex CD-R and one on an Office Depot CD-R. Both discs are skipping in my truck's CD player so it does not appear to be a Dell CD-RW drive firmware issue.

I know some of the CD players that I am using may just be overly sensitive but there was definately a change in the audio CD-R discs that I burn on the home PC between running Windows ME and upgrading to XP.

The really odd thing is I took a CD-R that I had burned on my XP machine at home (and had verified was skipping) to a coworker that has a Mac running OS10. He ripped the contents of the disc to his hard drive and then burned it to another CD-R. The disc that he burned on his Mac plays flawlessly without any skipping through repeated plays.

I really don't understand this... do I need to go back to ME or maybe create a dual boot PC? Is there anything else left to try to get these CD-RW drives to burn audio just like while I was running Windows ME? Can this just be a flaw in Windows XP and 2000? (I don't believe that to be the case since no one else seems to have this problem.)

 

[Max Leung]

Well, when you ripped the disc onto the mac, the CD-RW drive's error-correction feature would fix any problems with the first copy.

Did the original CD-R skip when played on the Mac? Did the disc burned on the Mac skip on your truck's CD player? Did your friend burn the disc with one of your own CD-Rs?

Could you try installing the trial version of CloneCD, and use it to make a copy of an original CD of yours, and see if the copy will still skip? Looks like you may have hit on a software issue, which may or may not be XP/2000 related.

 

[Todd Stout]

We didn't actually try playing the CD-R that we made on his Mac (he hates the band that was on it). The disc that was burned on his Mac plays fine in my truck's CD player (I have played it several times now). We used a blank Office Depot CD-R that was handy while I normally have been using Memorex, TDK, Maxell, Sony and PNY. I did notice that he had used the track-at-once and not the disc-at-once mode that I always use at home (I've been trying to remember to try TAO mode on my XP machine as a test).

I'll give CloneCD a try and see if there are any issues with that.

 

[Todd Stout]

I have now used the CloneCD demo to copy an audio CD (after making 3 coasters first... whoops). So far the copy seems to be okay but I'm not getting my hopes up just yet. I haven't listened to the copy all the way through yet but it played fine through the first 40-45 minutes on two occasions now.

I have also been reading about the Windows XP compatibility mode. I'm considering uninstalling Nero and reinstalling it using the XP compatibility mode set to Windows ME/98. I'm thinking that maybe Nero running in an ME/98 environment will help... it's worth a shot I guess.

 

[Keith Paynter]

I recently upgraded my operating system from w98 to XP Pro (new primary Hard Drive, full version of XP installation), and the compatibilty issues were outrageous. My DVD-Rom wouldn't play, my high speed CDRW would fail to record, and my ATI PCI video card wouldn't run the TV or DVD players.

What it boiled down to 99% of the time was the lack of XP compatible drivers for the software. I got updates for the ATI card and my CD Burning software from manufacturer's web sites, and everything is much better now.

 

[Todd Stout]

Well, I was not able to get Nero to run or install in Windows XP comatibilty mode. So much for that idea.

I have used CloneCD to copy two of my audio CDs now and neither one has skipped on me... yet.

I just learned yesterday that someone else here at work tried copying an audio CD and it ended up an "unplayable skipping mess." The PC that was used to make that CD is just like my work PC (Dell Optiplex GX-260 with Windows 2000) so there seems to be a problem that is now common to three people and four PCs (two running XP and two running Windows 2000... and all are Dell).

Any more ideas? I'm still open to try more suggestions.

Thanks.