CD Recording Problems at 24x?

Infopackets Reader Victor R. writes:

" Dear Dennis,

I recently bought a CD-RW 24x10x40 drive and have used to to copy two disk without trouble. Lately, I tried to make an audio CD from files that I downloaded from the net. I got up to 75% completion and then my computer had a fatal error. The error was 'Vcache (01) +00000fc7 Error: oe: c004E663'; I wasn't sure if my computer was fast enough for the 24 spin recorder, so I tried slowing the speed of the copying process but still received the same error. As another possibility, I turned off the virus protect and all other running programs and still received the error. Any help is appreciated! "

My response:

My suggestion for you is to try another CD-R brand, like Sony. Also, ensure that nothing else is running in the background (just as you disabled the virus scan program) while recording the CD. Lastly, try enabling DMA (direct memory access) on your IDE controller under Device Manager to see if it helps your problem. Some burners cannot handle DMA and you may burn a bad CD. The only way to know is to try. If you can use DMA, your system should run much faster and you should rarely ever encounter a CD error from buffer underrun. Note that if your computer starts acting very strangely after DMA is enabled -- it is most likely because the CD Recorder cannot use DMA; in this case, disable it.

Victor Wrote in again:

" After working fine for a few days, the CDRW drive is no longer being recognized by my system. When I look at the device properties, I get this 'Your registry might be corrupted. (Code 19). Click Troubleshooter to start the troubleshooter for this device.' I have restored my registry from before the drive was installed and still it does not work. Is there a Newer driver for the drive that I could possibly try? I am running Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 2. Once again, any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated! "

My response:

As a follow up to my previous answer, I would suggest that you:

Use the software that came with the CD Recorder. If it doesn't work and if it's giving you error messages, try the CD-Recorder on another computer with the same operating system: Win2k, Service Pack 2 (SP2). Again, use the CD Recording software that came with the Recorder. This will eliminate the fact that it might be your copy of Windows 2000 SP2 that is causing the errors. If that still doesn't work, try using the CD Recorder on a system with Windows 98 with the CD Recording software that came with the CD Recorder. If none of the above suggestion work for you, it's possible that your CD Recorder drive is defective. Try returning it for the same model. You may also want to consider using another brand.

After sending out this newsletter, Keith N. wrote in and wrote about a possible solution for Victor:

" I have been through all the problems he mentions and I have a couple of suggestions for Victor. You might try disabling the 'auto-insert notification'. I had one model (Memorex 2224 CDRW) which exhibited much the same behavior, and this was the last fix I had left and it actually works. It also sounds like a problem a friend had, and it turned out that the drive had not actually been made before WinME/XP/2000 had come out, and the drivers he had gotten with the drive which had supposedly been for XP, etc. were not compatible. He removed the drive and installed in a machine with 98SE and cured the problem. Check Maker's website 1st for updates and firmware updates and you never know, you just find exactly the fix you need by checking the FAQs page and updates for known issues. I didn't notice a name for the burning software he's using, which opens up another place to seek documents and help.

CDRW's are notoriously finicky and it can sometimes be the most simple little thing at fault. The afore-mentioned Memorex problem was solved, but later we found that Memorex makes 2 drives, one named "CD-RW 2224" and another named "CDRW 2224". The only difference is the dash between CD & RW, yet they are NOT the same drives! Always check CAREFULLY for the model numbers and if they don't match exactly, e-mail or call their tech support for the right info/drivers.

There's a link to Microsoft's web site which will show how to turn off auto-insert notification in Windows 2000/Pro, and other OS's. "