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CD/DVD Firmware

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A consistent problem that we’re having at Refresh is customers purchasing DVD discs and then returning them as being ‘faulty’ because they refuse to work correctly on their machines. Once they come back in to store we then run a couple of tests and they check out as being absolutely fine meaning that quite often a customer has just returned to us dozens of completely fine discs.The reason for the media being incorrectly identified as being faulty is that each brand of DVD disc uses a different dye on the bottom of the disc as well as differing plastic compositions and silver reflector density.

As such the DVD writer has to adjust its laser for each different type of disc and if your DVD burner doesn’t recognise a particular disc then this process becomes quite difficult for the writer to achieve.This week I’m going to show you how to do something called a ‘firmware update’ which is a small piece of software developed by the manufacturers as they test new discs and improve the compatibility of their drives already on the market. By performing a firmware update on your drive you can gain benefits such as faster disc burning as well as greater compatibility both in actually recognising blank discs and creating a good quality, universally compatible disc at the end of the burning process.

Thankfully performing a firmware update is free of charge and as long as you take care with what you’re doing it’s relatively easy. I will point out that if done incorrectly there is a possibility that you could permanently break your burner but as long as the slightest amount of care is taken it should be pretty difficult for even a novice computer user to cause any amount of damage. I will declare in true Click tradition that I won’t be held responsible should anything go wrong and your drive is rendered useless as a result of following any of the advice given in this article.

The first step is identifying the make and model of your DVD drive which can be easily achieved by downloading and running the free Nero Infotool utility. This can be downloaded from here and once run the program will display the type of drives present in your system in a drop down box up the top left hand side of the window. In my case the utility returned the result ‘HL-DT-ST GSA-H10N’ which was as clear as mud to understand but a simple Google search informed me that this was a LG branded drive and ‘GSA-H10N’ was the model number.

Once armed with this information you should head to the manufacturers website which again can be found relatively easy with a Google search. Once there head to the support section and whilst I can’t tell you exactly where to look you should simply look for a section dedicated to DVD drives and firmware updates. If you have problems locating firmware for your particular drive then a good place to start is one of the help forums such as www.rpc1.org where you will find people happy to give you advice.

Once you have located the correct firmware update for your drive simply download the package on to your computer and whilst in most instances a firmware update will just involve running the update utility and clicking on the ‘Go’ button it is imperative that you read the accompanying instructions. Once the utility has completed then that’s it, you can delete the file you just downloaded and rest safe in the knowledge that the software stored on the firmware chip inside your DVD burner is bang up to date.

Congratulations, now completed your drive should now be more compatible and potentially less troublesome than it was ten minutes ago when you first started reading this article. If you have had any problems updating then your best bet once again is to either head back to the manufacturers support page or a user supported forum such as www.rpc1.org.

The post CD/DVD Firmware appeared first on Printer, Hardware and Software Help and Advice - Igloo.


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