Jim:

Yes, interesting problem. I take it both these drives are in your 8250? Which drive is master (usually top) and which is slave? Have you checked the transfer mode. If you're not sure how to do this, the procedure is shown nicely HERE.

My Samsung Rom drive is on the top and the NEC is below that. I am the original owner of the system.

As mentioned most burned DVD movies play weel (a few don't) it's when the fast forwarding or rewinding takes place it really causes the problems.

In your post are you suggesting to make sure DMA is eneabled on teh top drive?  I'll have to check it out on mys system when I get home this evening.

Jim

Jim:

DMA should be enabled for both drives. Please post back and let me know if that's the issue. If not, we can look for other things.

DMA setting were correct.

Jim

Since regular commercial disc play fine, then it sounds like either a media issue, or simply a quirk of the Samsung drive. I have two drives, an NEC DVD-ROM and a Pioneer DVD±RW, and the Pioneer has no trouble with certain discs, especially damaged ones, that the NEC seems to choke on.

As far as media, I'm a strong advocate of the saying that no one ever saved money buying cheap media. Verbatim, Maxell and Taiyo Yuden are pretty much all I buy any more.

Thanks.

Last night I went into device manager and removed the Samsung drive and when I booted up it was reinstalled.  It seemed to play my DVD+R media movies that I had and a home movie on the same media but the locking up occured again.

I do recall that I never had this issue in the past.  I guess if it were software related it would effect both optical drives.  Correct?

Also, since regular commercial DVD's play great, I'm wondering if the drive could just be getting old or is becoming less receptive to my recoded DVD media.  Do the lasers ever wear out to a point that makes the drive less reliable with home recorded DVD's?  The unit is about 3 years old.

And I doubt reinstalling the drivers from the original CD would help?  What are your thoughts?

I do use good quality name brand blank Dvd's.  The same that I've used over the years.

Any additional input would be appreciated.

Jim

Well, I just replaced my DVD-ROM drve with a 16x Lite-on and still have the same issue.  I now noticed that it's happening on both the DVDRW and ROM drives.

I've already uninstalled the secondary channel (dma seems to be right), updated video driver and PowerDVD (seems this happens in Windows media player if I play a DVD there).

I never had any issue with any of the DVD+R disks that I burned before.  Some codec missing?

Help!

Jim:

Ok, well this certainly isn't going in the right direction. Let's check the installation first. Please confirm...

1. New drive jumpered to cable select?
2. Booted to system setup and both drives are enabled?
3. Checked device manager and no errors?
4. Verified both drives are running in DMA mode, as shown in this article?