A friend of mine is having probs with his A03 writer in his PC.Basically,whenever he tries to write a DVD using say CloneDVD or DVD Decrypter the thing times out trying to write to the DVD.He's tried various brands of DVDR (Incl Ritek) and it's still the same.He tells me the drive READS dvds etc as he's taken images of a few things and it's worked fine.Do these Pioneers just have one laser that does everything? ie cd writer/dvd writer and reader
My guess is the drive has had it and I've told him as a last resort to run one of the CD drive cleaning products (With the brush underneath) to see if there's dirt on the lens...
Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Nick

Edited to say that this I think,is a hardware issue as opposed to software (I've just rebuilt his machine with XP SP2 last week to cure another fault and the problem still exists as it did prior to the rebuild)

 

Is the burner on its own IDE channel ?

 

My first guess would be that the laser is on it's last legs.

The drive should still make a good reader and will probably write cd-r for a while yet.

To be fair, 2 years out of a writer is not bad by any standard.


Paul

 

Yep,it's on secondary master and the drive HAS worked previously with this config anyway.I'm under the same impression as Paul that the laser is on its way out.Least these things are down to 'consumable' prices now.I remember buying this exact A03 retail kit from PC World when dvd writers had pretty much just come out and paid £300 for it (PC World had reduced it from £500 to £300 during a boxing day sale)
I then sold it to this friend after a year of owning it who has used it since.I think we've both had our moneys worth out of it anyway lol

Cheers

 

People used to say a writer would normally last for 500 burns - not sure if this is true these days, £50 for dvd/cd burners now so they are throw away items anyway I guess..

 

I'd be disappointed if a drive only lasted 500 burns. That's not even 2 writes a day within a 12 month warranty.

You should expect thousands of burns from a writer before the laser packs in.