Widescreen Gaming Forum

hello
I'm trying to find what technical detail escapes me.

I have an Pioneer DVD-106 slot-in Drive which seems to work fine:
that is : it reads CDs without problems and some DVDs

yeah the problem is : some DVDs are automatically ejected after about 3~5 seconds of the drive seeking
At first it happened with burnt DVDs so I thought it was ok... I thought the drive probably had a bit too low fault tolerance...
Then it happened on some X rated media so I still thought it was ok and just bad quality media...
Then it happened on Mass Effect that I just got for christmas and I think it's really annoying so I'm trying to find the culprit of the problem.

I tried the DVD of X3 reunion and it just reads it without problems so ...
what can differ from a DVD-ROM to another DVD-ROM that can make it so that a drive can't read it while a DVD-R drive in my girlfriend's comp can ?

thanks for any answer.

I'm not sure why it would do this, but generally with problems like this, flashing the drive is generally the best method to fix.

_________________
System Core: | Intel Core i5-2500K + ASUS P8Z68-V + 16GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 MHz | Win7 x64 | MSI R7970 Lightning 3GB [1105/1400] |
Display: | 3 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC @ 7680x1600 | Dell u3011 |

No idea what is the cause, but I've experienced similar in the past with DVD drives that adamantly would not read some discs... my way around it was borrow an external DVD drive and install from there...

Thanks for the answers.
Unless I should flash an older firmware revision, the latest version was already flashed and tried in RPC2 & RPC1 variants.

Where the hell are slot-in drives now ? :doh
Any advice about a DVD reader who's either silent or get the option to be silent (Pioneer 106 drives have a small utility to reduce spin speed & therefore noise) and reads everything thrown at it ?
Don't much care about reading blu-ray or writing DVDs, it's all about getting a drive which can read the rare DVD I throw at it

Panasonic do a laptop slot-loading DVD drive, but desktop size ones just don't exist any more.

I think I'm onto something !

Mass Effect DVD is dual layer about 7.5GB of data (from memory)
X3 is single layer about 4.3GB of data
the X rated media is also dual layer
Sacred 2 (which doesn't work either) is dual layer with more than 7GB of data ...

so my drive seems not to read dual layer DVDs
I'm actually relieved that I found the culprit !

EDIT: hum... I don't know panasonic reputation in the world of DVD computer devices

I personally stay away from panasonic in every way possible, unless someone is giving me their stuff free.

_________________
System Core: | Intel Core i5-2500K + ASUS P8Z68-V + 16GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 MHz | Win7 x64 | MSI R7970 Lightning 3GB [1105/1400] |
Display: | 3 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC @ 7680x1600 | Dell u3011 |

I've got a Silverstone rebranded version of that drive. Works fine. Never had issues with Panasonic hardware, but I've not really bought that much from them.

Sony do a slot-loading Blu-ray for £150, also on Scan.

ouch ! that's a bit too expensive for something aimed at just being a DVD reader

if I had a lot more budget/overall money I might go for something like that but ho well...
I guess I'll just give up trying to get a slot-in drive... I wonder why trays are so much more present on the market

did a bit of searching and found this : http://www.plextoramericas.com/index.php/dvd-rw/internal-dvd-rw/px880sa for 40€
there's cheaper samsung one's but this one seems a bit more trusty, plus I hope to be able to find a good balance between read performance & noise
I just hope it doesn't do like my last plextor CD writer which burned (with a puff of smoke) after several month of not using it in a spare computer... :roll:

Did I say I wasn't very lucky with optical drives in general ?

I used to see the point in expensive Plextor drives, but not in the last few years. I've not had an optical drive die on me yet - I tend to stick to Optiarc (what was NEC) with the odd Asus drive thrown in for some variety.