I have tried to burn a CDR today with my new Dell Inspiron 640m/E1405, and the CD always ends up blank, and no data is actually written to the CD. I was able to burn the Vista DVD iso today with success, so I know the DVD writing capability works.

I have tried Nero, iTunes, and the built in Windows Explorer CD burn utility, all with the same results, no data is written to the CD

the CD/DVD burner in my laptop is the TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-L632D burner (as reported by Nero's InfoTool), DE03 firmware which is the latest according to what I've found on Google

I've gone through dell's website and there is no driver or firmware even listed for the TS-L632D anywhere, I've also had one unsuccessful chat session with dell's support and they had me remove the UpperFilters and LowerFilters registry keys from HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

This didnt do shit after rebooting, and I'm about to log back on and chat with another support rep


**** QUESTION ****
Does anyone else own a similar laptop and have any CD burning issues?

1/10/2007 8:39:28 PM

Harass the hell out of dell support.

1/10/2007 11:37:09 PM

i've spent 4hrs in chat with them today, no solutions from the morons there

they even insisted that I reinstall Windows as a solution, laughable

I did however find that buring the CDs at a lower speed seemed to work, 24x is the max this CDR will burn at, which always seemed to fail, but 20x appears to have worked, as does 4x

I'll run some more tests with it tomorrow, but I've been fucking with this thing since 4pm today, i'm tired

1/11/2007 12:18:30 AM

where do you go to chat?

1/11/2007 9:56:49 AM

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/gen/chat?c=us&l=en&s=gen&redirect=1

its way easier to talk to idiots that dont speak engrish through the chat rather than over the phone

1/11/2007 10:26:39 AM

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/gen/chat

[Edited on January 11, 2007 at 10:27 AM. Reason : ^ bastard]

1/11/2007 10:26:40 AM

The problem may be with your CD media. Try another brand and see if it will burn.

1/11/2007 1:09:13 PM

I have an Inspiron 6400 which has this exact same model DVD/CD combo drive. I have only ever had problems writing DVD's, not CD's. Very first thing I did when I got this computer was to Killdisk wipe the whole HDD and reinstall XP from the ground up. I don't want any of that Dell bloatware crap on my laptop. I'm sorry to say that a reformat does NOT solve this problem; it seems to be inherent to the drive itself. Dell tech support is outrageously stupid - the last 2 people I attempted to speak with about this seem to have been in India and could barely speak the english language. I have also hunted like mad to no avail for a solution to this problem. The firmware driver on Dell's website comes with a BIOS file and flash program which I simply cannot get to run at all. I even went so far as to attempt to navigate Samsung's Japanese website in order to try to find either a working utility or other means of flashing new firmware. No dice. I've tried different brands of media, and that seems to have no effect. The last thing I tried was installing Nero 7 to see if it would help the writing process, but even it screws up once in a while. (Nero 6 would screw up all the time, but maybe 3 out of 10 times will Nero 7 choke.) If you should happen to come across a solution, I'd love to hear all about it...

1/11/2007 2:58:15 PM

1) i really doubt this is a common problem with your specific laptop (as opposed to a software/hardware fuckup just present on your machine)...what makes you think its widespread? did you find forums full of people bitching about the same problem?

2) did you try with a few different types of media? do they all exhibit the same behavor (doesnt work at 24X, does at 20X). if you haven't tried this then youve probably wasted a colossal about of time.

3) if you can burn at 20X instead of 24x i don't see what the point of wasting anymore time on it is...but then again i value my time greatly

1/11/2007 3:11:25 PM

1. yes, the Dell forums have nothing but complaints from people about this particular CD/DVD burner drive, thats the #1 reason I think the drive, or firmware is absolute crap

2. I've tried two different types of CD media, with varying results. It seems that nothing will burn at 24x speed at all. The disc is blank after the burn process completes. I was able to burn one black plastic Memorex CD-R, and one HP CD-R with success at 4x

I was able to burn a single layer DVD at 8x though without error

3. I'm trying varying speeds below 24x now, I've got a 16x CD in the verify process right now

I know enough that I'm going through trying to narrow down the cause of the slowdown. I have even run a disk defragmentation pass, and my laptop has a speedy 7200rpm SATA drive, not the 4200rpm super slow laptop HD

The only other fault I might be able to find is that the CD burner only has a 2MB buffer, but I would hope that wasnt the issue

1/11/2007 3:32:03 PM

they're going to mail me a new CD burner, lets hope that actually works

1/11/2007 8:53:01 PM

How'd you convince them to do it? I might be interested in this as well.

1/11/2007 9:40:08 PM

after trying everything they had requested, I insisted that the drive was functionally broken since no burning softwares will correctly write CDs in this computer.

I patiently went through all of their bullshit solutions to "fix" the problem that they repeatedly assured me would work, and after 3 rounds with no success, I clearly explained the drive was broken, nonfunctional, etc, and that they send me a replacement

The drive is apparently user serviceable, just one screw loose in the bottom of the laptop and it'll slide right out, similar to IBM's hot swap bays, and according to them this will not void any sort of warranty

1/12/2007 11:58:36 AM

Good to know, thanks for the tip. I will probably wind up doing the same thing with mine.

1/12/2007 4:22:28 PM

damn, I got the same burner. Haven't tried to burn anything yet though.

1/12/2007 5:33:23 PM

post back when you try, and what, if any success, you have

when I searched Dell's forums, people had nothing but complaints about the drive

1/12/2007 9:22:41 PM

I don't know about the Inpsirons, but there were a series of Hitachi DVDRWs that shipped with the Optiplex 620s last year for a period of 3-4 months with firmware that coasted everything you tried to burn.

If its not working, and its under warranty, get on the phone (NOT a chat session) and demand a replacement.

1/12/2007 11:17:24 PM

it took them damn long enough, but I finally got a new Phillips CD/DVD burner today for my laptop. Initial tests show that it works now.

Dell is still a piece of shit for customer service, the first service call I had with them they never shipped out the CD burner, bastards

1/30/2007 11:08:41 PM

yeah im glad i havent had to call those bastards for about 6 months now. its like they TRY to piss you off.

1/31/2007 12:18:20 AM

i have the Inspiron 6400 as well and I rarely have problems burning CDs, and when I do, I toss in a new blank CD and that usually solves the problem. I have't tried to burn DVDs yet though. I need to go buy some and try it.

1/31/2007 1:13:34 AM