my friend purchased a shw-160P6S from newegg and placed it in an external enclosure. when she tries to burn a dvd-video or data dvd in nero it stalls on 38% or 1%. the timer continues but buring doesn't seem to complete it just stops. we then tried the burner on my computer and it burns fine, nothing wrong. it just doens't seem to want to work for her's. she has an HP Pavilion a620n. we don't know what the problem is so if anyone can help that will be great. also she has a lite-on sohw-802s its dvd+r/rw if im correct installed in her computer. could this be conflicting with the burner in the enclosure? thanks in advance.

it could be the enclosure

That would be my guess also. How does it connect to the PC, USB?

yea usb. could it be the enclosure itself? it seems to work fine in my computer when we tried it.

Could the enclosure be a USB 2.0 and her computer only has USB 1.0?

possibly. how can she check? and any other possibilites of why its not working?

Since it works fine on your PC but not on her's sounds like a USB issue to me. She might have a program or Anti Virus that's causing the problem. Try turning off all programs that are runing including the Anti Virus. Who makes the enclosure and is it USB 2.0? Should say somewhere on the enclosure and on the spec sheet.

QUICK-SERV AL-525U2-S 5.25" USB2.0 mini External Enclosure

After a quick google search her PC is USB 2.0 I'm guessing that when you connect it to her PC XP recognizes it no problems there? What happens if you put a music CD in it and try to listen to it? I'd try turning off the Anti Virus first to see if it will work. My Anti Virus reaks havoc on my ripping speeds on my PC.

when i connect it to her pc it shows up in my computer and it is able to play music cds. she's going to try a to burn a dvd with the anti virus off.

after turning off the antivirus. still doesn't do a complete burn. it stopped at 73%

Were you using a different blank media than she is?

nope the same.

what is your computer? a620 looks like it's using the Via KM400 chipset. this could be a chipset/usb issue.

this is the latest bios I could find online for the a620n
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/s...tem=pv-31037-2

however improper flashing could cause your computer to not boot up ever again so beware the risks.

mine is a dell dimension 3000

or if she doesn't have the Windows service pack 1 update that supports USB 2.0

not supporting usb 2.0 would result in very slow burns @<1x with multiple buffer underruns. I don't think twinkster reported that. if so, then I missed it.
stopping suddenly in the middle of the burn indicates a communication problem between interfaces

uses an Intel chipset, known to be among the least problematic.

oh she just looked at her system info and she says its service pack 1

any reason for not moving to sp2?
also I'm thinking along the lines that this is a chipset issue of her computer if you have no problems burning with the 160p6s in the external enclosure with your computer (Via chipsets have always been a little flaky). my suggestion is to try the bios update to see if it fixes anything (see above, including warning). otherwise replace her internal drive with the new drive.

should she update to service pack 2 first and see how the burning goes? then update bios? and is there anyway to flash it safely?

1st issue: make sure the computer doesn't crash when you're flashing. so power disconnections, don't hit the power switch, close all other programs. it's pretty much automatic from that point. just read the directions.

2nd issue: was automatic updates not turned on, that's why she has sp1? or did she just stick with sp1 because of problems that might exist with sp2? I'd move to sp2, but some people have problems. are you running sp2 or sp1?

im running sp2

ok. so update to sp2. flash bios if necessary. if that doesn't work... consider replacing the drive internally.

alrite. thanks for taking the time to help out.