NEC DVD +-RW ND-6500A

Question

I have a DELL Inspiron Notebook with a NEC DVD +-RW ND-6500A  DVD player. Recently I purchased some TDK DVD-R 1-16x DVD's.  The DVD is a x8 player but I thought newer DVD's would be backward compatible. Obviously not..   The DVD player (ND-6500A) does not seem to recognizes these DVD's. I get a message indicating the DVD needs to be formatted. When I click to format I get an error message saying a fatal error message has occurred. Is there anyway I can update this DVD player so that I can use these DVD's??   If not, is there a newer version DVD that I can buy to upgrade the hardware in my notebook?   Thanks you so much for any help that you can give me on this matter.

bacillus · Answer

a few folk have posted similiar stories as yourself. what I can say from personal experience is that the 6500 will work with verbatim x16 dvd-r disks.

arunas98 · Answer

Did you get any answers? I contacted tdk they told me that dvd driver needs updete? Any suggestions?

Papo_60 · Answer

I sent an email to NEC support but have not heard anything back from them. Thanks for the info on 'needs an updated driver'. I will go back to the NEC web site to see if they have any driver updates that can be downloaded from that site.   I will let you know if I find anything.

davejohn · Answer

You're confusing drivers with firmware updates.  All CD/DVD devices use the drivers built into Windows XP.  There are none from the drive manufacturers.   You can find firmware updates to NEC drives here, both official and modified.   Here is another source.   Note that using modified firmware may void the warranty on your drive.   Dave

bacillus · Answer

seems like your drive thinks the media is an unformatted cdrw which doesn't bode well.

you can try turning off dla by going into My Computer, right click your D drive>properties>DLA and disable it.

can I as if you've tried a verbatim x16 dvd-r as it works in my 6500?

Papo_60 · Answer

Thanks Dave for the site info for updating the firmware. I also found the Dell web site for downloading these updates, the version was the same at both sites. I downloaded & installed the version for my drive.

Dell site is at:

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/

Now when I place the x16 DVD into the drive it does recognize it but I get the following message when I try to read it :

DLA cannot use this blank media until it has been formatted. Would you like to format this media now?

I know the DVD's are formatted already. Do they need to be formatted again to the x8 speed/format? I said to go ahead & format the DVD & then I was able to write/read to it OK. Is this request to format normal?
Thanks

DJ_Bach · Answer

Thanks davejohn for the firmware update sites. I recently updated my ND-6500A firmware from 202C to 203D. I was wondering if I could reverse this (203D back to 202C) using the 202C firmware from that update site. Thanks...

davejohn · Answer

The request is normal if you're using packet writing software, like DLA, InCD or DirectCD.  A blank DVD (or DVDRW) has to be formatted before you can drag and drop files to it.   It doesn't need to be formatted if you're using Sonic, Nero or Roxio to write a data or video disk.   Dave

davejohn · Answer

Try it.  I've never tried it on a slim-line drive, but desktop NEC drives don't like going back when flashing from Windows.  You have to boot into DOS and flash from there.   Why do you want to go back?   Dave

DJ_Bach · Answer

In 203D, my drive was making some grinding noises prior to making a CD copy from a CD-RW (audio) created on a consumer CD recorder. I just figured a workaround by disabling DLA before making this copy. Since there could be potential problems going back to 202C, I think I'll just leave this alone. Thanks for the heads up.

kb8man · Answer

How do you check your drives firmware version?   Thanks

davejohn · Answer

Google 'Nero InfoTool' or 'DVDInfoPro'. Either program will display the firmware version, as well as lots of other info. Dave

kb8man · Answer

Don't have either of those. Only the Sonic apps that Dell puts on. Any other way of finding it. Thanks for the response

DJ_Bach · Answer

For firmware, go to Device Manager, right click NEC 6500A for properties, click details...

davejohn · Answer

Device Manager doesn't display the firmware version. Download one of the above programs, install it, and run it. They are free. Dave

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NEC DVD +-RW ND-6500A

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