now I recognized, that in the Event-Log the drive is shown as removable drive!
We have EventIDs 134 and 135.
Dell Germany doesn`t kno anything:
They told us, to update the Chipsetdriver, to delete the Low-andHigh-Filtes in the Reg, and the funniest thing: we should "upgrade" the Firmware of the Samsung-Drive with the only given FW by Samsung...
Our company just bought a load of Optiplex 170Ls, all with the SW-252S drives. We've installed Mandrake Linux 10.0 on them, so I can probably forget getting any help from Dell. At any rate, here's what we have happening:
The drives seem to work fine. Then after the machine has been running for a while, you go to open the CD tray and it simply won't open. It can't be open manually or with any soft command. The only cure is rebooting.
I'm seeing issues all over these boards with these drives, and am convinced the firmware's got an issue. One person mentioned that Samsung has new firmware for the SW-252S, but that it won't load on the Dell OEM versions of the drive (???!!!????).
I hope I hear something from dell on these drives, or the next couple hundred machines we buy might not be Dells.
We have informed DELL and told them to change the Samsung-Drive.
But for DELL it will be very expensive, because we sell our products worldwide with an Optiplex GX270 included.
So this will not be cheap for them to change the Drives on all continents.
But I din`t think that Samsung is responsible for this issue...
I´m always laughing about the jingle here in Germany: "Darum Dell" (translated: "That`s the reason for using DELL"), or the new one: "Easy as DELL"
I just got 22 GX270's all Win2k here in the office> My New workstation Service Tag Number: 4LW7N41 is experiencing the Same problem. But I have 2 Drives that get disconnected. I get the following Event Logs listed below as well as popups.
The 2 Drives is a Samsung DVD-ROM SD-616 and a Samsung CD-R/RW SW252S
After a while the drives just wont open and you get the event log hits and the following Popup
Very Fustrating. Tech support has no clue. So far I have gotten. Make sure my CD is clean and make sure the cables are good.... But 22 Bad cables? There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.
I'll bet that your problem is with the SW-252S, and that it's causing a problem with the IDE bus thus causing problems with the other drive (I imagine they're on the same IDE cable).
He was talking about having problems with both the CD-RW and the DVD, not the hard drive.
By the way, I got extremely bold with mine. I found that there is brand new firmware, version R951 (a few days old) on the Samsung Optical Disk Drive site:
http://www.samsungodd.com/eng
My machines are running Linux, so I had no way to run their Windows flash utility. I chased down this link to a DOS flash utility of theirs:
http://www.samsungodd.com/KorLib/File/sfdndos.exe
...and put it, and the R951EXP.BIN firmware on a dos bootable floppy. My first attempt to load it told me that the formware wasn't compatibile with the drive. I've seen on other posts here that people couldn't load the R950 forware either. The dos version however has a -N flag to force the load, so I tried:
sfdndos r951exp.bin sm -n
...the sm was for secondary master, as that's were my sw-252s is. That loaded the firmware without any errors, and I restarted. The Linux OS sees it just fine.
Now I just have to let it run and see if it flakes out like it's been doing or not.
I have a feeling that, for support reasons, Dell has firmware written that rejects these updates, possibly because they want to handle all such updates.
I don't think there's any way to force samsungs windows flash utility (sfdnwin.exe).
And speaking of which, what's with this god-aweful trend of upgrading firware (even system BIOS!!??!?) with utilites that have to be run on top of windows? That's just asking for trouble. Let alone the problems that it causes if you're not running windows at all.
And you could search samsungodd.com all day long and you WON'T find that dos utility...I had to google it out of them. What a crock. What do you expect from a site that REQUIRES flash 7 just to get in the door. (I'll stop ranting now :))
Anyway...I'll report back on how the firmware update works for me. Remember though...I truely flushed by warantee down the bowl doing this, but hey, I just want the thing to work.
Dell customizing firmware on optical drives? Interesting, never seen proof of this though. Why would they want to control it?
Anyway, I have a theory on this one. Some of these newer drives have power saving features in the firmware. If you go into the bios and turn the power management setting to S1 instead of S3, it believe it will disable that feature on the drive. I'd be interested to know the results of this.
And the reason you lost both drives is because a slave can't operate without a master on an ide channel. So, the offending drive would be your primary master according to this theory.
The drives are connected do Secondary IDE_Channel as Master.
Jumper ist set do CableSelect.
But if your idea works with disabling the Powermanagement, it`s stupid too, because this showas, that DELL hasn`t made a COmbatibility-Check!
But the next thing:
DELL sent us new Drives.
4 out of 9 have been the same non-working Samsung SW-252s.
Funny, isn´t it? :D
The other 5 are LG 8384B, which are working well.
Well guys...bad news on that R951 firmware upgrade. After a couple of days, three out of six of my 170L machines with the new drive firmware lost the drives. Several with the old firmware did as well.
These drives and/or their firmware are junk...plain and simple.
Well, you want it fixed don't you? I offered something to try. No one wants to though I guess. So just keep on driving yourself insane then.
It's not a compatibility problem if that's what the problem is, more like bad firmware on that drive. I imagine it would do the same thing in any system.
I was talking to tinyrk. He said that it didn't matter if it worked or not. Being a member of the message boards, I would say he needs to email the complaint department for his issue because no one can help him with his issue here.
Ahh...very sorry, my mistake. I'm sure you're correct that this issue would be totally independent of the OS...though I can just see telling that to Dell Support after telling them these machines are running Linux.
I set that power management to S1 on four of my machines and will see how they make out.
You may be on to something, as the issue does seem to occur when the systems have been totally untouched for some time.
TinyRK
9 Posts
0
May 27th, 2004 03:00
after a few hours of testing: the Chipset-Driver didn`t help.
Now, I will try the Registry-Filters.
:(
EDIT: Still testing!
Message Edited by TinyRK on 05-27-2004 12:46 AM
TinyRK
9 Posts
0
May 27th, 2004 06:00
now I recognized, that in the Event-Log the drive is shown as removable drive!
We have EventIDs 134 and 135.
Dell Germany doesn`t kno anything:
They told us, to update the Chipsetdriver, to delete the Low-andHigh-Filtes in the Reg, and the funniest thing: we should "upgrade" the Firmware of the Samsung-Drive with the only given FW by Samsung...
What`s going on with DELL ?!
Message Edited by TinyRK on 05-27-2004 04:52 AM
tdexter
63 Posts
0
May 27th, 2004 19:00
Our company just bought a load of Optiplex 170Ls, all with the SW-252S drives. We've installed Mandrake Linux 10.0 on them, so I can probably forget getting any help from Dell. At any rate, here's what we have happening:
The drives seem to work fine. Then after the machine has been running for a while, you go to open the CD tray and it simply won't open. It can't be open manually or with any soft command. The only cure is rebooting.
I'm seeing issues all over these boards with these drives, and am convinced the firmware's got an issue. One person mentioned that Samsung has new firmware for the SW-252S, but that it won't load on the Dell OEM versions of the drive (???!!!????).
I hope I hear something from dell on these drives, or the next couple hundred machines we buy might not be Dells.
Tom
TinyRK
9 Posts
0
May 28th, 2004 07:00
We have informed DELL and told them to change the Samsung-Drive.
But for DELL it will be very expensive, because we sell our products worldwide with an Optiplex GX270 included.
So this will not be cheap for them to change the Drives on all continents.
But I din`t think that Samsung is responsible for this issue...
I´m always laughing about the jingle here in Germany: "Darum Dell" (translated: "That`s the reason for using DELL"), or the new one: "Easy as DELL"
LOL
David Lausten
8 Posts
0
June 1st, 2004 22:00
I just got 22 GX270's all Win2k here in the office> My New workstation Service Tag Number: 4LW7N41 is experiencing the Same problem. But I have 2 Drives that get disconnected. I get the following Event Logs listed below as well as popups.
The 2 Drives is a Samsung DVD-ROM SD-616 and a Samsung CD-R/RW SW252S
After a while the drives just wont open and you get the event log hits and the following Popup
Very Fustrating. Tech support has no clue. So far I have gotten. Make sure my CD is clean and make sure the cables are good.... But 22 Bad cables? There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.
Event Type: Information
Event Source: Removable Storage Service
Event Category: None
Event ID: 135
Date: 5/20/2004
Time: 8:54:27 AM
User: N/A
Computer: DLAUSTEN
Description:
Received a device interface REMOVAL notification for device:
\\?\IDE#CdRomSAMSUNG_DVD-ROM_SD-616E_________________F501____#5&33d6ca78&0&0.0.0#{53f56308-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}
Data:
0000: 0e 01 00 00 05 00 00 00 ........
0008: 00 00 00 00 08 63 f5 53 .....cõS
0010: bf b6 d0 11 94 f2 00 a0 ¿¶�.”ò.
0018: c9 1e fb 8b 5c 00 5c 00 É.û‹\.\.
0020: 3f 00 5c 00 49 00 44 00 ?.\.I.D.
0028: 45 00 23 00 43 00 64 00 E.#.C.d.
0030: 52 00 6f 00 6d 00 53 00 R.o.m.S.
0038: 41 00 4d 00 53 00 55 00 A.M.S.U.
0040: 4e 00 47 00 5f 00 44 00 N.G._.D.
0048: 56 00 44 00 2d 00 52 00 V.D.-.R.
0050: 4f 00 4d 00 5f 00 53 00 O.M._.S.
0058: 44 00 2d 00 36 00 31 00 D.-.6.1.
0060: 36 00 45 00 5f 00 5f 00 6.E._._.
0068: 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 _._._._.
0070: 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 _._._._.
0078: 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 _._._._.
0080: 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 46 00 _._._.F.
0088: 35 00 30 00 31 00 5f 00 5.0.1._.
0090: 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 23 00 _._._.#.
0098: 35 00 26 00 33 00 33 00 5.&.3.3.
00a0: 64 00 36 00 63 00 61 00 d.6.c.a.
00a8: 37 00 38 00 26 00 30 00 7.8.&.0.
00b0: 26 00 30 00 2e 00 30 00 &.0...0.
00b8: 2e 00 30 00 23 00 7b 00 ..0.#.{.
00c0: 35 00 33 00 66 00 35 00 5.3.f.5.
00c8: 36 00 33 00 30 00 38 00 6.3.0.8.
00d0: 2d 00 62 00 36 00 62 00 -.b.6.b.
00d8: 66 00 2d 00 31 00 31 00 f.-.1.1.
00e0: 64 00 30 00 2d 00 39 00 d.0.-.9.
00e8: 34 00 66 00 32 00 2d 00 4.f.2.-.
00f0: 30 00 30 00 61 00 30 00 0.0.a.0.
00f8: 63 00 39 00 31 00 65 00 c.9.1.e.
0100: 66 00 62 00 38 00 62 00 f.b.8.b.
0108: 7d 00 00 00 43 00 }...C.
Event Type: Information
Event Source: Removable Storage Service
Event Category: None
Event ID: 135
Date: 5/20/2004
Time: 8:54:27 AM
User: N/A
Computer: DLAUSTEN
Description:
Received a device interface REMOVAL notification for device:
\\?\IDE#CdRomSAMSUNG_CD-R#RW_SW-252S_________________R901____#5&33d6ca78&0&0.1.0#{53f56308-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}
Data:
0000: 0e 01 00 00 05 00 00 00 ........
0008: 00 00 00 00 08 63 f5 53 .....cõS
0010: bf b6 d0 11 94 f2 00 a0 ¿¶�.”ò.
0018: c9 1e fb 8b 5c 00 5c 00 É.û‹\.\.
0020: 3f 00 5c 00 49 00 44 00 ?.\.I.D.
0028: 45 00 23 00 43 00 64 00 E.#.C.d.
0030: 52 00 6f 00 6d 00 53 00 R.o.m.S.
0038: 41 00 4d 00 53 00 55 00 A.M.S.U.
0040: 4e 00 47 00 5f 00 43 00 N.G._.C.
0048: 44 00 2d 00 52 00 23 00 D.-.R.#.
0050: 52 00 57 00 5f 00 53 00 R.W._.S.
0058: 57 00 2d 00 32 00 35 00 W.-.2.5.
0060: 32 00 53 00 5f 00 5f 00 2.S._._.
0068: 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 _._._._.
0070: 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 _._._._.
0078: 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 _._._._.
0080: 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 52 00 _._._.R.
0088: 39 00 30 00 31 00 5f 00 9.0.1._.
0090: 5f 00 5f 00 5f 00 23 00 _._._.#.
0098: 35 00 26 00 33 00 33 00 5.&.3.3.
00a0: 64 00 36 00 63 00 61 00 d.6.c.a.
00a8: 37 00 38 00 26 00 30 00 7.8.&.0.
00b0: 26 00 30 00 2e 00 31 00 &.0...1.
00b8: 2e 00 30 00 23 00 7b 00 ..0.#.{.
00c0: 35 00 33 00 66 00 35 00 5.3.f.5.
00c8: 36 00 33 00 30 00 38 00 6.3.0.8.
00d0: 2d 00 62 00 36 00 62 00 -.b.6.b.
00d8: 66 00 2d 00 31 00 31 00 f.-.1.1.
00e0: 64 00 30 00 2d 00 39 00 d.0.-.9.
00e8: 34 00 66 00 32 00 2d 00 4.f.2.-.
00f0: 30 00 30 00 61 00 30 00 0.0.a.0.
00f8: 63 00 39 00 31 00 65 00 c.9.1.e.
0100: 66 00 62 00 38 00 62 00 f.b.8.b.
0108: 7d 00 00 00 43 00 }...C.
Message Edited by David Lausten on 06-01-2004 06:28 PM
Message Edited by David Lausten on 06-01-2004 06:51 PM
tdexter
63 Posts
0
June 2nd, 2004 12:00
Tom
tdexter
63 Posts
0
June 2nd, 2004 14:00
By the way, I got extremely bold with mine. I found that there is brand new firmware, version R951 (a few days old) on the Samsung Optical Disk Drive site:
http://www.samsungodd.com/eng
My machines are running Linux, so I had no way to run their Windows flash utility. I chased down this link to a DOS flash utility of theirs:
http://www.samsungodd.com/KorLib/File/sfdndos.exe
...and put it, and the R951EXP.BIN firmware on a dos bootable floppy. My first attempt to load it told me that the formware wasn't compatibile with the drive. I've seen on other posts here that people couldn't load the R950 forware either. The dos version however has a -N flag to force the load, so I tried:
sfdndos r951exp.bin sm -n
...the sm was for secondary master, as that's were my sw-252s is. That loaded the firmware without any errors, and I restarted. The Linux OS sees it just fine.
Now I just have to let it run and see if it flakes out like it's been doing or not.
I have a feeling that, for support reasons, Dell has firmware written that rejects these updates, possibly because they want to handle all such updates.
I don't think there's any way to force samsungs windows flash utility (sfdnwin.exe).
And speaking of which, what's with this god-aweful trend of upgrading firware (even system BIOS!!??!?) with utilites that have to be run on top of windows? That's just asking for trouble. Let alone the problems that it causes if you're not running windows at all.
And you could search samsungodd.com all day long and you WON'T find that dos utility...I had to google it out of them. What a crock. What do you expect from a site that REQUIRES flash 7 just to get in the door. (I'll stop ranting now :))
Anyway...I'll report back on how the firmware update works for me. Remember though...I truely flushed by warantee down the bowl doing this, but hey, I just want the thing to work.
Tom
TinyRK
9 Posts
0
June 2nd, 2004 14:00
The Samsung is connected to Master / Second IDE
At the moment we are changing the Drives!
jjbuckaroo
271 Posts
0
June 4th, 2004 02:00
Dell customizing firmware on optical drives? Interesting, never seen proof of this though. Why would they want to control it?
Anyway, I have a theory on this one. Some of these newer drives have power saving features in the firmware. If you go into the bios and turn the power management setting to S1 instead of S3, it believe it will disable that feature on the drive. I'd be interested to know the results of this.
And the reason you lost both drives is because a slave can't operate without a master on an ide channel. So, the offending drive would be your primary master according to this theory.
TinyRK
9 Posts
0
June 4th, 2004 08:00
Jumper ist set do CableSelect.
But if your idea works with disabling the Powermanagement, it`s stupid too, because this showas, that DELL hasn`t made a COmbatibility-Check!
But the next thing:
DELL sent us new Drives.
4 out of 9 have been the same non-working Samsung SW-252s.
Funny, isn´t it? :D
The other 5 are LG 8384B, which are working well.
tdexter
63 Posts
0
June 4th, 2004 12:00
These drives and/or their firmware are junk...plain and simple.
Tom
jjbuckaroo
271 Posts
0
June 4th, 2004 13:00
Well, you want it fixed don't you? I offered something to try. No one wants to though I guess. So just keep on driving yourself insane then.
It's not a compatibility problem if that's what the problem is, more like bad firmware on that drive. I imagine it would do the same thing in any system.
jjbuckaroo
271 Posts
0
June 4th, 2004 18:00
tdexter
63 Posts
0
June 4th, 2004 18:00
I completely missed your previous post. Thanks. I'll give that a try on a few of these machines.
Tom
tdexter
63 Posts
0
June 4th, 2004 18:00
I set that power management to S1 on four of my machines and will see how they make out.
You may be on to something, as the issue does seem to occur when the systems have been totally untouched for some time.
Tom