Samsung TS-H552B DVD-RW Problems

Hi everyone,

this is the first time ive used a forum and id like to say the help i have seen posted on here is first class!

My problem is with a samsung ts-h552b DVD-RW. I bought it from Ebay last week and installed it. First off it was not being read by Device manager but it would show up on the BIOS. At that time i also had a CD-RW installed as the master drive so i installed the DVD-RW as a slave drive, but the PC would only read the DVD-RW after i installed the dos drivers. If i reset the PC it would lose it again so would have to reinstall the drivers everytime i shut down.
I solved this problem by disconnecting the CD-RW and making the DVD-RW the master drive. The PC now reads the DVD-RW everytime! (YAY)

The problem i have now is the the DVD-RW burns CD's but will not burn DVD's! It will read DVD disks with no problem but will not burn them. I thought it might be because i needed to update the Firmware. So i did from version TS03 to TS04, still not burning DVDs. After installing the new firmware, Nero 6 Ultra edition now tells me when the burn fails that i have a SCSI/IDE ERROR. I know a tiny abit about them (as what they are!) so i thought id be brave and swap the IDE's on the motherboard around, but when i do the PC doesnt read the hard drives so that didnt solve anything. My IDE setup is as follows...

IDE 1 ----- Hard drive 1 ------ Hard drive 2
IDE 2 ------------------------ DVD-RW

The only thing i can think of next is to reinstall Windows 98 SE, yes i know im still running that!
sorry this is such a detailed post but i wanted to inform you as much as possible.
thanking you for any help

Blacktea_

Welcome to WD forums blacktea.

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but the PC would only read the DVD-RW after i installed the dos drivers

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Windows 98 onwards shouldn't need any drivers added for any cd/dvd type device (thats not strictly true, for the reading parts it needs no drivers, but for writing it does & they are added by your writing app.) - these want removing & any associated entries in config.sys & autoexec.bat sorting out too.

If you can confirm your motherboard (or pc model), & ALL your potential IDE devices (so disk models, cdr model & we have dvd already) - we can maybe advice on a config that can get all 4 going & still maintain peak speeds..

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so i thought id be brave and swap the IDE's on the motherboard around, but when i do the PC doesnt read the hard drives

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- but you also need to tell it where to boot from if you do this (option for that in BIOS).

Hi Confus-ed thank you so much for responding, i understand what you are saying but dont know the methods of doing them!

are you telling me to uninstall all my burning apps? also i really havent clue on how to edit the config.sys and autoexec.bat files. the DVD-RW came with a cd but it doesnt read very well, the DVD-RW and my old CR-RW had trouble reading it and somtimes would freeze the PC. On the CD there was a program call instant CD/ DVD and the dos drivers which was installed by running a .exe file called cdsetup. It created a folder called c:\ cdrom. The folder contains a readme file, Mcsdex and a config.sys file but i dont know how to use them if needed!

as for my PC its a TIME Machine (if your from uk do you rem the advert with Lennard Nimoy aka Spook from Star Trek TOS a few years back?) I couldnt tell you what motherboard i have as the PC didnt come with any documentation of what was installed. Is there anyway i can find out the names of my hard drives through the pc so i can tell you what they are? I dont want to install my old CR-RW so i just want the 2 HD's and the DVD-RW i want running.

One thing that came to mind is that if i reinstalled Win98SE would it create the config and autoexec from fresh, meaning they would automatically pick up my IDE setup?

once again thank you for you help, sorry this is another essay!

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Originally Posted by blacktea_

..One thing that came to mind is that if i reinstalled Win98SE would it create the config and autoexec from fresh, meaning they would automatically pick up my IDE setup? ..

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Yes - but its a bit drastic for what you can fix with a bit of editing ;)..

98 on doesn't need any drivers (as I said) previously though you (well some program or other) added a DOS cd type driver by adding entries to config.sys & autoexec.bat probably a bit similar to this :-

In config.sys : DEVICE=C:\CDROM\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:IDECD001
In autoexec.bat :C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:IDECD001

Put 'REM_' (_=space) in front of these entries or delete them (use 'edit' from prompt or notepad say inside windoze) - its quite a complicated explain why they don't need to be there, but briefly its to do with real & protected mode drivers link - as example/confirmation

are you telling me to uninstall all my burning apps?

Well I wasn't.. I was telling you to do all of that above, but if you have multiple burning software the various 'writing drivers' can conflict, so yeah get rid of it all & just put one back on for testing..

I dont want to install my old CR-RW so i just want the 2 HD's and the DVD-RW i want running

If you only want the DVD working, forget all about the drive id's etc for now (I was gonna see if we could get all 4 going, but if you only want 3 its not important ;))

You should check the properties of the dvdrw in device manager and see if dma is enabled. If it isn't, try enabling it. If it is, try disabling it.

Have you tried updating Nero to the latest version?

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Originally Posted by hudsonsmith

You should check the properties of the dvdrw in device manager and see if dma is enabled. If it isn't, try enabling it. If it is, try disabling it...

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Why do you think this ? - if anything isn't this advice back to front ? Try PIO mode first, admittedly it'll go slower, but turning on DMA is just surely making it more complicated ?

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Originally Posted by confus-ed

Why do you think this ? - if anything isn't this advice back to front ? Try PIO mode first, admittedly it'll go slower, but turning on DMA is just surely making it more complicated ?

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Some drives are just picky about this - they just don't like one or the other. I'd also like to rule this out as a cause.

Confused you are a legend! Drive now works a treat! hudsonsmith thank you also for your advice but i did already did try that b4 i followed confused advice but it didnt make a difference.
Once again thank you for your kind help.

Blacktea_

:cool: ..result ! Which is all we are all trying to get to ;)

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Originally Posted by confus-ed

:cool: ..result ! Which is all we are all trying to get to ;)

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I have the same problem as blacktea but I am running Win XP. I upgraded from 98 so probably had dos drivers installed. How do I remove them under XP?

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Originally Posted by mjm6x9

I have the same problem as blacktea but I am running Win XP. I upgraded from 98 so probably had dos drivers installed. How do I remove them under XP?

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Welcome to WD forums mjm6x9 - xp doesn't really use the autoexec.bat & config.sys files mentioned above (well they might - but that's another can of worms entirely ;)) - in normal startup they won't come into play anyway ..

Try us with your full symptoms please - 'its the same' isn't enough ;)

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Originally Posted by confus-ed

Welcome to WD forums mjm6x9 - xp doesn't really use the autoexec.bat & config.sys files mentioned above (well they might - but that's another can of worms entirely ;)) - in normal startup they won't come into play anyway ..

Try us with your full symptoms please - 'its the same' isn't enough ;)

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I can read DVDs and CDs and can write CDs. When I try to write a DVD using nero, when I go to burn, the burning window comes up and says it sorts the DVD data and caches any info but then appears to hang. If i click on the window header it then comes up that it is not responding.

The drive is set to primary master. I have another DVD drive set as secondary master which is set to region 1 (the samsung DVD-RW is region 2) but I can't see why that should be a problem.

I have yet to upgrade the firmware but from blacktea's problem that might not be the solution.

I'm running XP with SP2.

Any other ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks

A few more interesting issues??

When i went to upgrade the firmware for the DVDRW drive I got a message saying "Flash Cmd Fail!!" and I don't know why this occured?

I then moved the DVD drive to the secondary IDE so only the DVDRW drive was on the primary IDE. Unfortunately I get the same error message.

I then looked in the hardware profiles at the DMA settings. However for the primary IDE there is no advanced tab to change DMA or PIO (there was for the secondary IDE). I was wondering if this is because I have a SATA harddrive? Could this cause a conflict with upgrading the firmware or stop the drive from burning DVDs?

Also the DVDRW manual talks about an E-IDE cable. Is that different from a standard IDE cable? Could this be the problem?

Thanks

I found the problem!

Had the wrong driver installed on the primary IDE so caused a conflict.

Everything working wonderfully now

Thanks

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Originally Posted by mjm6x9

I found the problem!

Had the wrong driver installed on the primary IDE so caused a conflict.

Everything working wonderfully now

Thanks

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Another result :cool: this one 'self powered' ;) - & I never even had to make 10,000 useless suggestions ! :D

I have the same problem (I bought this TS-H552b drive, and it burns CDs and not DVDs. Mine is just an external firewire enclosure with the drive in it. First i thought it was media...tried a bunch of different media...burned CD fine. I also updated the firmware from 03->-04. The drive shows up as oxford semiconductor ieee blah in my device manager)

So i am stuck here trying to figure out why i cant burn DVDs. Can someone help me?

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Originally Posted by confus-ed

Welcome to WD forums mjm6x9 - xp doesn't really use the autoexec.bat & config.sys files mentioned above (well they might - but that's another can of worms entirely ;)) - in normal startup they won't come into play anyway ..

Try us with your full symptoms please - 'its the same' isn't enough ;)

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Oops. I should have read this first =D I am also running XP. I have the problem where i cannot burn DVDs but i can CDs (at 40x). I have a gateway 600x laptop, 1.7 MHz, 512 MB Ram, 30 Gig Internal HD, 80 Gig External Firewire in an enclosure. And i just bought this TS-H552b DVD RW Drive that seems to have some sort of flaw (software issue or something). Mine did not come with any CD, it said it didnt need to (and i run XP anyway). I have service Pack 2 and I used to use a CDRW externally but now this DVD burner should take care of cds also...

How do i fix this problem? As you fixed blacktea's, i realize that he was not on XP so it may be a different solution. Please help me any way you can

quiike

PS: I called samsung and spoke with someone...i explained to him the situation and pointed him to this forum after a while and he said that it is different with me because i have the DVDRW in an external enclosure (and he talked about how thats different..scsi...bus..blah) I am not to computer savvy although I want to be, but anyway, he said that it seems to be a bus transfer issue or some communication between it and firewire or something and asked me to look at my chipset and see who made it...i told him intel and he said maybe what i could do is see if intel has some sort of update. He said it seems like some sort of bus transfer issue/firewire communication/bus related...what type of thing would i download from intel? I looked around and really was lost at what to download. and is my problem much different than blacktea's since its in an external firewire enclosure? If so, do u have any info on it? As you can see from all my writing before u nice people even have a chance to look at my messages, i am going crazy here trying to fix this before i actually pass the date where i can send the drive back.

If this is a huge problem because its external, what types of dvdrw DONT have these problems externally? the ones that cost $500? Other people have had same problem with different dvd drives i think...anyway

thanks for all ur help in advance, you guys seem to know what your doing here =D

quiike

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Originally Posted by quiike

..PS: I called samsung and spoke with someone...i explained to him the situation and pointed him to this forum after a while and he said that it is different with me because i have the DVDRW in an external enclosure (and he talked about how thats different..scsi...bus..blah) I am not to computer savvy although I want to be, but anyway, he said that it seems to be a bus transfer issue or some communication between it and firewire or something and asked me to look at my chipset and see who made it...i told him intel and he said maybe what i could do is see if intel has some sort of update. He said it seems like some sort of bus transfer issue/firewire communication/bus related...what type of thing would i download from intel? ..

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So welcome to the forums Quiike ;)

Well the bloke you spoke to at samsung knows his stuff - he's quite right almost all writing problems are to do with scsi ennumeration .. :thumbs: so huh ? I hear you cry -;)- let me explain..

All the devices concerned are ATAPI {including IDE hard drives} (ATA Packet Interface, where ATA means AT Attachment & the AT in question there is refering to AT style computers like in "IBM PC/AT" which started the home pc boom) - however to write to a cdfs {cd file system} type system (so that includes DVD formats as they are extensions of this) we need SCSI as the original AT command set has nothing for writing - so the common approach is to make ATAPI devices ennumerate (pretend to be similar from calculated values) scsi (small computer system interface) as that natively has writing function to any medium no matter what the file system..

All this needs various bits of translation at various levels in the muddle that is windows & one of these is 'chipset drivers' & another is 'ide drivers' & since this ones external also firewire or USB drivers might come into play in our 'translation' - if any of these bits are not right or missing any number of errors might occur - so in answer to what doesn't suffer from this ? only scsi devices ;)

If you get a bit more explict on 'intel' (tell me/us the board) maybe I can pin down for you the missing bits in our translation process & we can get this 100% & not 'sort of nearly' ..

To all , if you are using the Darn External Device (DON'T). All p[roblems occur during the transfer of data. So my advice is to put the DVD RW into the computer case. Try and see what happens..