Two Sony optical IDE drives won't burn

[SourSevenade]

I can really use some help before I start banging my head on the table. So it started like this: I had an aging computer that was no longer adequate to my standards, however everything worked fine even when I installed the windows 7 pro update from a Vista installation. Since then I have retired the PC to my parents home, which for them is actually an upgrade. The only difference now is that I had them get their own copy of Windows 7 Home.

The problem they are having, which is now my problem, is that the CD burner and the DVD burner both will not burn discs. There is no option to burn them and upon inserting a blank cd-r, both drives tell me, "Windows can't read disc in drive"

Here are some issue-relevant specs on the fore-mentioned PC:
Lan-party nf4 Ultra-D Motherboard
Sony CD-RW CRX230E IDE optical drive
Sony DVD-RW DRU-710A IDE optical drive

Both drives are on the same IDE cable and the DVD-RW is set Master and the CD-RW is set to Slave.

Here is how the two drives are listed in the device manager:
Sony CD-RW CRX230E ATA Device
Sony DVD-RW DRU-710A ATA Device

I've noticed they are listed as ATA Devices, though they are IDE. This may be part of the issue but I cannot find drivers on Sony's site for their IDE counterparts, and I have no idea what else to do, short of buying new SATA drives if this is the problem.

I've uninstalled the drivers for the optical drives, and had windows scan and reinstall them; didn't work. I've tried to update the motherboard drivers but n'vidia doesn't seem to offer nf4 chipset drivers anymore. Instead I've gone to the length of installing modified drivers in hopes that it would help but it hasn't.

I found the, "Modded Driverpacks for Win7/Vista" here,
Win7/Vista: Optimized nForce Driver Packs • nForcersHQ.com
I installed the, "Non-AHCI Performance Packs" so if anyone has insight as to why I maybe shouldn't have done that I could use the knowledge. Honestly it was a hasty uninformed attempt to fix the problem quickly, but I still have the problem.

Normally I try and do fix these problems but I really need help on this one. Either I'm forgetting something, or the problem is out of my league. Thanks for taking the time to read my post. Help is enormously appreciated.

 

[Lomai]

Hi Have you installed the chipset drivers for your motherboard? Regards

 

[SourSevenade]

Hi Have you installed the chipset drivers for your motherboard? Regards

Did you read the entire post? I've installed modified drivers, mostly due to the fact that I can't find win7 specific drivers for the motherboard (Lanparty UT nf4 ultra-D) or the nf4 chipset. This is pretty much what I have to choose from:

DFI LANParty:The Best OC Platform! Overclock, Motherboard, Intel, AMD

or

Win7/Vista: Optimized nForce Driver Packs • nForcersHQ.com

Insight for what the most appropriate driver pack would be is part of what I'm looking for.

 

[Lomai]

Apologies for the oversight on my part - sorry again

Regards

 

[kword88]

Your CD or DVD drive can't read or write media

i dont know if this will solve your problem, but its worth a try....

 

[SourSevenade]

Apologies for the oversight on my part - sorry again

Regards

That's ok! I still appreciate the sentiment. I'm not saying I'm so good that I wouldn't overlook the obvious, just not this time!

Your CD or DVD drive can't read or write media

i dont know if this will solve your problem, but its worth a try....

Thanks, I was excited to try this solution, but it says it doesn't detect any problems. It makes me wonder if it just some windows 7 setting that I'm not aware of.

 

[SourSevenade]

Bump!! Any other opinions? Don't be afraid!

 

[strollin]

You are spinning your wheels trying to find drivers for ATA vs IDE. ATA, IDE and PATA all refer to the same type of drives.

What software are you using to burn the disks? If you insert a blank disc it seems obvious that Windows will say it can't read it since there is nothing written to it.

 

[SourSevenade]

You are spinning your wheels trying to find drivers for ATA vs IDE. ATA, IDE and PATA all refer to the same type of drives.

What software are you using to burn the disks? If you insert a blank disc it seems obvious that Windows will say it can't read it since there is nothing written to it.

I'm just using windows explorer. What I've come to expect, and what I'm able to do on my other computer is open the disc drive (with a double click) and instead of Windows telling me it can't read the disc I get a window that I can transfer files into for when I'm ready to burn them to a blank disc. I am not presented with the same option in the case of my parents computer, just, "Windows can't read disc in drive". It's like the drives aren't seen by Windows as burners, but as regular disc (read only) drives.

So you were saying that it doesn't matter that the device manager lists them as ATA when they are in fact IDE drives? If they are in fact no different, then could I just install the SATA drivers from the Sony site and be fine?

 

[karlsnooks]

From the info I did find, I strongly recommend visiting the Sony site and looking for updates there and/or making sure you have the latest bios update for your computer.

Also recommend you visit following site:
Windows 7 Compatibility Center home

 

[karlsnooks]

And after that try the FixIt center diagnostics:
Hardware devices are not working or are not detected in Windows

 

[kword88]

did you check out these pages from sony?

Product Details | Sony Storage Support

Product Details | Sony Storage Support

one of them has a firmware update you might want to try.

 

[kword88]

you could also try here for drivers for your motherboard:

DFI LANParty:The Best OC Platform! Overclock, Motherboard, Intel, AMD

 

[strollin]

You are spinning your wheels trying to find drivers for ATA vs IDE. ATA, IDE and PATA all refer to the same type of drives.

What software are you using to burn the disks? If you insert a blank disc it seems obvious that Windows will say it can't read it since there is nothing written to it.

... So you were saying that it doesn't matter that the device manager lists them as ATA when they are in fact IDE drives? If they are in fact no different, then could I just install the SATA drivers from the Sony site and be fine?

ATA and IDE are different names for the same thing. You definitely don't want to install SATA drivers if they are ATA (IDE) drives.

 

[strollin]

Do you know if these 2 drives ever supported drag & drop in Explorer? Dragging & dropping files in explorer requires support for a CD filesystem known as UDF (Universal Disk Format). It's possible that these drives are too old to support that. There may be a way to update the firmware to add that support.

My suggestion before doing that would be to download some 3rd party CD burning software such as Imgburn. If you can burn files to the CD using that software then you will know your drives are working correctly but don't support UDF.

 

[SourSevenade]

Ok I'm back after more than a week now. The reason for the hiatus was I just decided to order a new SATA DVD burner, then after waiting a week for it it didn't arrive so I checked my order status and I HADN'T ORDERED IT!!! Geez, being forgetful and having a good imagination is not a good combination.

SO! Instead I've now hooked up a working SATA DVD drive that I took out of my other PC and I've made a little progress. The SATA drive is actually being detected by the Windows as a burning drive!! but I'm still not able to burn. First off it want's me to format the "disk" for every CD or DVD I put in. Second, after I format it (I've tried both as Live File System, and Mastered) I'm not able to actually drag and drop files into the window to burn onto the media. I get a red circle with a diagonal line through it over the cursor icon.

I've tried all your suggestions sufficiently, but have not fixed or even targeted the problem. I would like to update the BIOS but unfortunately DFI's site doesn't give me a clear description for which BIOS I require. The link for the specific mobo is below:

DFI LANParty:The Best OC Platform! Overclock, Motherboard, Intel, AMD

I found another site with many BIOS revisions, though I'm a bit intimidated and not sure which one would be the best pick. Site linked below:

DFI LanParty NF4 Bios & Tools | techPowerUp

I'm hoping some one will look these sites over and give me a suggestion and tomorrow I can give it a shot. Again, Thanks to everyone for offering their help!!

 

[SourSevenade]

Do you know if these 2 drives ever supported drag & drop in Explorer? Dragging & dropping files in explorer requires support for a CD filesystem known as UDF (Universal Disk Format). It's possible that these drives are too old to support that. There may be a way to update the firmware to add that support.

My suggestion before doing that would be to download some 3rd party CD burning software such as Imgburn. If you can burn files to the CD using that software then you will know your drives are working correctly but don't support UDF.

OK I just tried Imgburn, which I already had on the PC, and the two original Sony IDE drives still won't burn, saying something about wrong format, but the extra SATA DVD burner (Sony Optiarc) I currently have hooked up does burn with Imgburn. The question that brings to mind though, is why would the Optiarc work flawlessly in my other Windows 7 PC, but not so well in this PC???