8 replies to this topic

[Boone Ra]

I'm seeking advice on how to determine if I need to replace my cd/dvd drive.  It's a SONY DVD + RW DW D56A that came with my Dell Inspiron 6000 purchased in 2005.  according to the Dell support site there no longer are driver updates for it.

My concern is that I've gotten blue screen errors when attempting to use CDs I've saved photos to. they can occur when I try to upload files using EMC 10 photosuite (the pictures were saved using a different program, and I forget which, some of them are pretty old), or I get a blue screen sometimes when I'm just trying to open the drive to remove the cd.

are the blue screen crashes happening because my drive/driver is out of date?
since there are no new updates for this drive does that mean I need a new drive, especially to work with EMC 10?
Do I have to give up on being able to recover the photo files I've saved to cd?
if I try to upload them using EMC 10 is it going to corrupt the program?

any suggestions, thanks very much...

[d_deweywright]

I'm seeking advice on how to determine if I need to replace my cd/dvd drive.  It's a SONY DVD + RW DW D56A that came with my Dell Inspiron 6000 purchased in 2005.  according to the Dell support site there no longer are driver updates for it.

My concern is that I've gotten blue screen errors when attempting to use CDs I've saved photos to. they can occur when I try to upload files using EMC 10 photosuite (the pictures were saved using a different program, and I forget which, some of them are pretty old), or I get a blue screen sometimes when I'm just trying to open the drive to remove the cd.

are the blue screen crashes happening because my drive/driver is out of date?
since there are no new updates for this drive does that mean I need a new drive, especially to work with EMC 10?
Do I have to give up on being able to recover the photo files I've saved to cd?
if I try to upload them using EMC 10 is it going to corrupt the program?

any suggestions, thanks very much...

Let's start by asking what type of disc your photos are on, are they erasable (CD-RW) discs or write once (CD-R) discs?  

Next, do you recall how you wrote your photo files to the disc or by doing a "Save" operation from your photo editor, or by dragging the files to the CD drive?  Or did you run something like Creator Classic, where you selected a bunch of photos at once, and then told the program to write to the disc?

When you get your blue-screen error, what error code/information do you get?

Regardless of the answers, you may want to try a program like CD-Roller or ISOBuster to see if they can recover your photo files.  Both have free trial applications that will tell you what they think they can recover, but you'll have to actually purchase the program before they will recover any files.

But let us know the answers to the above questions, and maybe we can give you some other ideas.

[Boone Ra]

Let's start by asking what type of disc your photos are on, are they erasable (CD-RW) discs or write once (CD-R) discs?  

Next, do you recall how you wrote your photo files to the disc or by doing a "Save" operation from your photo editor, or by dragging the files to the CD drive?  Or did you run something like Creator Classic, where you selected a bunch of photos at once, and then told the program to write to the disc?

When you get your blue-screen error, what error code/information do you get?

Regardless of the answers, you may want to try a program like CD-Roller or ISOBuster to see if they can recover your photo files.  Both have free trial applications that will tell you what they think they can recover, but you'll have to actually purchase the program before they will recover any files.

But let us know the answers to the above questions, and maybe we can give you some other ideas.

they're CD-R discs.
I'm seeming to recall the program I used was Picture Studio which came installed by Dell on the Inspiron, and to the best of my recollection what mostly I did was save file folders, which held a number of pictures each, using a "save" operation rather than click&drag.

I've been able to view the files using EMC 10 Photo Suite but as noted only with vulnerability to blue screens and sorry, I've lost track of the piece of paper I had the error codes written on.  I could try again and if I got the blue screen could tell you what the codes are, but I just had to unistall/reinstall EMC 10 after Photo Suite quit working and as I noted in my initial post I'm afraid corrupted picture files might have been responsible.  

thanks!

[Boone Ra]

they're CD-R discs.
I'm seeming to recall the program I used was Picture Studio which came installed by Dell on the Inspiron, and to the best of my recollection what mostly I did was save file folders, which held a number of pictures each, using a "save" operation rather than click&drag.

I've been able to view the files using EMC 10 Photo Suite but as noted only with vulnerability to blue screens and sorry, I've lost track of the piece of paper I had the error codes written on.  I could try again and if I got the blue screen could tell you what the codes are, but I just had to unistall/reinstall EMC 10 after Photo Suite quit working and as I noted in my initial post I'm afraid corrupted picture files might have been responsible.  

thanks!

update:
I tried to save a photo from Photo Suite to CD to a blank disc, got a message there were no compatible media files.
tried to format the disc, got a message it was "read only" (?it was a new, unused, blank CD)
went to Dell Support and, once again, redownloaded the driver (which hasn't been updated since 2005 and evidently never will be)
this  time, when I inserted the disc, I did get a window asking me if I wanted to format it using Sonic DLA, I clicked ok and the dread blue screen appeared
it said BAD_POOL_HEADER
stop: 0X00000019, 0X00000020, 0X85835820, 0X85835838, 0X1A030001

it suggested removing any new software, sure hope that doesn't mean EMC 10
maybe I have to remove/disable the dvd/driver?
also suggested disable BIOS memory options caching or shadowing but I don't understand what that's about

I tried restarting, it got as far as the desktop repopulating and then blue screen BAD_POOL_HEADER reappeared, this time 0X00000020, 0X86F605A0, 0X86F605B8, 0X1A030001

restarted again in safe mode
tried Dell's crash analysis tool which suggested I needed updates for Sonic tfsnifs.sys,  or Symantec NanEx15.sys (so is Norton my problem? I hate dealing with those guys and have encountered before issues where the antivirus program was causing more trouble than it ever saved me from)
tried to follow a link I found on my program menu for Sonic DLA troubleshooting but windows announced the link went noplace
was able to get the cd drive to open up so I could get the blank cd out of it

restarted again in normal mode and things seem to be working ok so long as I avoid the cd/dvd drive

sorry, a lot of verbiage to unload on volunteer support. but not sure where else to turn without giving Dell more money

[Jim_Hardin]

As Dewey suggested – CD Roller or ISO Buster is the only thing that is going to tell us much about your problem discs.

[d_deweywright]

update:
I tried to save a photo from Photo Suite to CD to a blank disc, got a message there were no compatible media files.
tried to format the disc, got a message it was "read only" (?it was a new, unused, blank CD)
went to Dell Support and, once again, redownloaded the driver (which hasn't been updated since 2005 and evidently never will be)

Okay...  slow down here.  You're going in two different directions.  I thought the issue was simply reading the files from your old CDs, but you're talking about writing to them.  So let's start with that issue.  

From what you've said, it sounds like you were formatting the discs and then writing your files from the image editing program.  In that case, you're doing something called "Packet Writing" to write the disc.  It is considered by many folks, myself included, to be very unreliable.  It's terribly convenient, when it works, but also responsible for many lost files when it fails.  The much more secure and reliable way to write files to CD-R is to write a session.  In this case you'd start Easy Media Creator, and select Creator Classic (preferably), add all the files you want to write into the session, and then burn them all at once.  If you leave the disc open, you can continue to write new sessions until the disc is full.  With this method, you would do all of your editing and saving to your HD first, and then write a bunch of pictures at one time.  (You don't want to write individual files as there is extra space used on the disc for each session.)

So, first, don't try to save your pictures to the disc using PhotoSuite.  Save them to your hard drive.

Now back to before, is there a problem reading your picture files from your old discs?  My suggestion would be to first just try copying all of the files to your HD.  Do you get any errors when you do this?  If not, great.  If so, then you'll need to try using one of the previously mentioned recovery programs to read the files.

So, try using Creator Classic, with an unformatted disc, to write your files.  Don't try saving them from your photo editor.  Let us know how that works for you.

Edited by d_deweywright, 11 April 2009 - 09:37 AM.

[Boone Ra]

I opened creator classic
selected a picture file already on my hard drive as the project
inserted a blank CD-R
clicked on "burn"
got a message there was no CD in the drive
opened the drive and reinserted the CD
the drive started a whirring sound
blue screen: BAD_POOL_HEADER  STOP: 0X00000019 (0X00000020, 0X84FAA398, 0X84FAA3B0, 0X1A03000)

sorry if in all my babbling I've obscured my primary concern, which is that I have gotten blue screens in a variety of situations, all involving my disc drive, leading me to suspect the drive itself is my problem.
the issue of a couple CDs with photo files on them is secondary: if I ever do solve the drive problem, then I'll worry about them.

[ogdens]

What happens if you try playing a commercial music cd?

Also, try using the built in burning capabilities of XP.

Try just copying a small data file (use a CD-RW for testing). If you don't know how, go to Start> Help & Support page and search on "make a CD".

[Brendon]

Pool Header Errors are a problem with Windows memory allocation. This could be caused by device drivers, bad sectors, other disk write issues, or even bad RAM.

Try a Google search on "STOP: 0X00000019"