burned disk is unreadable or unrecognizable to windows

[jsm]

the combo cd/dvd drive in my hp pavillion zd8000 is TS-L532A

 

btw, what is the difference between a L532R and L532A drive - does anyone know

 

I used to be able to write dvd+r video disks, but now lately I can only write dvd+rw and dvd-rw disks

 

I don't think it is a matter of the media I use, as I have tried 3 or 4 different types [memorex, maxell, and TDK] and still my problem persists. I also lowered the burning speed to 2x - still with no luck.

 

I also used several different dvd burning softwares including roxio 9, but none worked for DVD(+ or -)R disks.

 

The disk seems to write and looking at the disk after burning you can see it has been burned, but the disk is unreadable on the laptop and on a dvd player.

 

Sometimes trying to access the supposedly burned disk, the drive churns away but won't bring anything up and sometimes it brings up an error message that the file may be corrupted or is unrecognizable to windows.

 

I went to a site: http://hijacker.rpcl.org/toshiba and flashed the firmware on my drive with winvupl532a.exe to XI94 - perhaps this is a problem, but as I say I can successfully burn videos on DVD(+ or -)RW media?

 

I'm getting tired of burning dvd(+or-)r coasters

 

any suggestions wd be much apprec

 

regards - troubled and puzzled john

[gi7omy]

Youtr drive is actually a Samsung - it's possible you have cross flashed the firmware from that site

 

There is a LOT of info posted here about that particular drive and also links for the original firmware:

 

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=119677

[jsm]

thanks for the link but it does not really provide a solution I don't think

 

question:

 

is there a limit to the number of times you can flash a drive? I tht I saw somewhere the properties of my drive says I only have 1 region change remaining - can flashing the firmware affect the region code?

 

I don't want to permanently bugger up this drive, if at all possible

 

I ran a small utility that claimed it cd enable my drive to read any region dvds - cd this be causing my problem?

 

I shd have been more careful - I'm not sure if my orig firmware was TI50 or TI51

 

do others with hp pavillion zd8000 laptops with this ts-l532a drive know what their orig version is or was?

 

In the link provided above the person who flashed to toshiba sd-r6472 while able to write faster, still cd not read the resulting 'burned' disks on their own laptop they were burned on - so it does not appear to really be a solution to my problem

 

regards - john

 

 

 

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Youtr drive is actually a Samsung - it's possible you have cross flashed the firmware from that site

 

There is a LOT of info posted here about that particular drive and also links for the original firmware:

 

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=119677

[gi7omy]

First of all - firmware flashing/updating has nothing to do with the region codes (that's actually set in Windows - reinstall windows after formatting and you go back to 6 changes)

 

I didn't say there was an answer to the problem there - I referred you to that to show that a LOT of people were having the same sort of problems and that the culprit is the drive and not the software and also links were provided to the original firmware

 

I was more concerned about this part of your post "...I went to a site: http://hijacker.rpcl.org/toshiba and flashed the firmware on my drive with winvupl532a.exe to XI94 - perhaps this is a problem, but as I say I can successfully burn videos on DVD(+ or -)RW media? ..." by the fact that you appear to have cross-flashed a drive. If your problems started after that - there's your culprit