07/26 Inspiron 9300 - Dying DVD Burner.

I ordered my notebook as the title states on July 26th - Recieved it on the 9th of Augest; so I've owned it for 18 Days.

I attempted to burn my first cd on the drive two days ago with a Memorex "Cool Colour" CD-R - Not the best, but my girlfriend likes the pretty colours . Using Nero 6.6.0.12 to copy an audio cd I was greeted with a burning error, while I can't remember the exact wording, it basically just didn't work (no obvious or outstanding error).

Grrrr, I thought - this can't be a good sign, especially aftering having had two cd-burners die on me in the past.

I then yesterday tried to burn a Maxell CD-R Pro (TY media) and was not surprised to be greeted again with an error - this time a buffer underrun. Catching on to the pattern I decided to save the log file, it can be found here.

Not wanting to jump to conclusions I directed my attention towards nero this morning, figuring if I had problems buring with another program that I could pinpoint the problem to the drive. Freshly out of CD-R discs, I turned to my stack of CD-RWs ( Verbatim DataLifePlus) - Threw the first one in with no result, A Unhealthy Look spreading across my face, I then tried 4 more from the stack with no result. To ensure that it was the drive, not the discs - I tried each one in my desktop, the mixture of used and empty discs all read perfectly.

As it stands It would seem as if the drive is already on the outs, so my question to you is, do you think it's possible to get a replacement drive from dell without sending the notebook for service (i've got no problem removing the drive and sending it on its own) - I already waited 14 days for the notebook (almost as long as i've had it), plus i'm moving into college in less than a week - where I will definately need it.

Any other advice, comments or experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

Yes you should be able to get a replacement, but you are going to have to convince Dell that the drive is broken.

My first thought is to update your firmware for the drive. Are you able to read cds ?

SG

 

It's able to read commercial cds at the moment (battlefield 2 etc.), I say at the moment because I was using the same CD-RWs yesterday, looking for an empty one but I ran out of time and had to leave. At that point in time it was reading them without a problem.

As for firmware, It's up to date with the latest Dell firmware from their support site. Will using the latest Sony firmware effect Dell's decision? (if the drive is truely broken I don't want to jeapordize a replacement in any way). I assume it won't, but I havn't used a a computer not built by myself (a computer with a warranty) in a long time.

 

It shouldn't affect it. It should be the same driver, unless Sony has a newer one.

Right click on your dvd drive, and go to properties. Then select the last tab, and make sure the "enable CD recording on this drive" is checked. Click apply and ok. Then try to use XP's burning software to burn a song (right click on a song and select "send to", select your cd drive).

According to Sony/Dell, CD-r & -rw should work on your drive. If the song does burn, then you probably need to adjust a setting in Nero to make it burn on to a cd-r. If the song does not burn, then I would call Dell and try to get a replacement.

SG

 

Bump.

Since my last post the drive has taken a turn for the worst.

When you inset a regular cd (game, music, etc.) the drive sounds like a rewinding tape, with strange intermittant noises (like the ones your old 486 used to make while booting).

I'm now wondering what the normal procedure is for "convincing dell the drive is broken". Would it be best to contant the support/customer service people or the spare parts department?

Any advice would be welcomed, Thanks.

 

My 3 yr old Inspiron 9300 (4yr warranty) is still working v. well but the DVD burner is failing. It's my second burner. The first, a sony, was replaced by the NEC 6250.

Current problems:

1) burner consistently writes errors near the layer boundary on DL DVDs now. Often the burn will succeed but the verification will fail (read errors). Nero Drive Speed scan shows these errors. The DVD will actually still play but just stops in the middle of the movie.

2) Too many DVD5s (data and video) are failing to open in the windows drive immediately after burn despite the fact that they were burned and verified (without tray recycle) as "successful" by various programs (Nero, Image Burn, ... ). They just won't open. The the only message that I get is "please insert a disk into the drive".

I have two questions:

1) Does anyone know the DVD drive brand options at Dell fot the Inspiron 9300 ?

2) As to my problem #2 I am frustrated because I cannot explore the problem because I cannot open these DVD's in Windows (I just get messages like "there is no disk in Drive D I can't even try and solve the problem. Can anypone recommend a good DVD recovery utility that will help me solve this?


I use Verbatims, TDK03's, various programs, and everything else works well.