PCA Forums

I've got a bit of a problem here. I got a Benq 1620 DVD-RW drive. My system is a thunderbird 1200 with 768 ram on an Asus A7V motherboard with built in promise ATA100 controller card.

Problem is when I first put the burner in I was not able to make a successful CD or DVD (keep getting write errors) until I loaded the latest firmware into the drive. However I still had the same problem I have now. When I try to burn a DVD in nero the computer crashes and just freezes. about the time it says checking media, normally the nero timer has counted to a few seconds. I can do cd's fine using nero. Nero version is 6.6.0.3. I can't use an older version because the drive is not supported. Dvds will burn fine in Sonic easy record software that came with the drive, but too much software uses nero like dvd shrink. I've tried changing from the promise card to the regular IDE channels and using the proper 80-conductor cable on the promise card. I’ve tried just this drive on it’s own channel with all other cd/ dvd drives unplugged.

I tried the drive in another computer and it works with nero just fine. So I thought there must be some software problem. I formatted the Hard drive and installed windows XP with SP2, VIA 4in1, and nero 6.6.0.3. and got the same problem. I've reset the BOIS settings and I believe it is the latest bios version acording to ASUS’s web site.

What else could be the problem.

ive been using clonedvd from elby with dvd shrink and its worked ok. personally i think benq is junk, i had a cd burner from them and it died just after the warrenty expired.

Are you using winXP w/sp-2 , I might be wrong but i think I heard something about a certain nero version was goofed after an SP-2 install.

that is correct about nero and sp2. i think nero 6.3 and above addressess the problem.

i'll try a few more dvd burning programs and post my results on what works. i'll look into clonedvd. (update clone dvd works fine)

What other program are there like nero that i can use?

I found Easy Media Creator 7 to be a fine program, seems Roxio is getting better though this will only work on 2000/XP so hope you have one of the two