I have a plextor CD-RW drive the 4824A and I want to update my firmware to the latest (1.06), the problem is I have an nForce 2 motherboard the DFI Lanparty Ultra B and I'm using the nVidia IDE drivers and I don't want any conflict killing my drive. I tried updating my Liteon DVD drive a couple of months back and my whole system froze half way through and killed that drive and it took quite some time to revive it in another PC. My plextor doesn't work in the other PC so I cannot use that to revive it if the flash goes wrong. I have been trying to flash the drive in DOS which is my prefered method but I cannot get it to work. PXUpdate the DOS flash program keeps saying that it cannot find an ASPI driver when I try and flash even though an ASPI CD driver is on the floppy.
Can anyone tell me how I can flash this drive in DOS? Is there any alternative flash program that I can use?

RedDwarf

if i'm not mistaken all you do is double click on the exe file to flash plextor drives. i've done this with my 48x24x48 & 40x12x40 drives with no problems. i've never had to flash it in DOS.

here's a link from plextor FAQ regarding flashing firmware.
http://www.plextor.com/english/support/faqs/FW00001.htm
__________________________________________________________________________

PLEXTOR 708A DVDRW
PIONEER 107D DVDRW
LITEON 811 DVDRW
TOSHIBA (2)1612 DVD-ROM
PLEXTOR 48X24X48 CDRW
PENT 4 HT 3.00C, 800 FSB, PENT 4 2.40 533 FSB
ASUS MOBO's P4P800SE (2)
1GB CRUCIAL PC3200 MEMORY, 1GB CRUCIAL PC2700
WESTERN DIGITAL 36GB RAPTOR HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR 200 GB HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR (2)250 GB HARD DRIVEs
MAXTOR 200 GB SATA HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR (2)120 GB HARD DRIVEs
MAXTOR 60 GB HARD DRIVE
ANTEC TRUE POWER430 WATT
ANTEC SLK2650 CASE, ANTEC SLK2600AMB CASE
CANOPUS ADVC-100 ANALOG TO DIGITAL CONVERTER
MAXTOR ATA -133 PCI CONTROLLER CARD

Your not using the nVidia drivers though aren't you? They have already messed up one drive and I don't want to do it to another drive.

RedDwarf

I'm sure I read somewhere that there's a Micro$oft fix for Nvidia, but that's not really my area. It sounds a little scary, but a lot of people here suggest deleting the Nvidia IDE drivers in Device Manager and letting Win re-install its own.

Just having the drivers on a disk doesn't mean they are loaded when your DOS session starts up. Remember the old autoexec.bat and config.sys days?

If you do, this article may be of some help ... hopefully you are using Win98 because it shipped with all the drivers, particularly the aspi4dos.sys one (and which is no longer available from Adaptec).

I know it's a bit weak but, hey, at least it's an answer!

Here's the link:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/190303/EN-US/

but I'd look into fixing Nvidia problems under Windoze first, particularly by searching the Micro$oft site for "nvidia".

Good luck

No, I'm not using the Nvidia drivers and what does that have to do with anything. I was trying to help you out. As far as using the Nvidia drivers just uninstall them and use the microsoft drivers. Liteon drives do not flash the same way Plextor does.

___________________________________________________________________

PLEXTOR 708A DVDRW
PIONEER 107D DVDRW
LITEON 811 DVDRW
TOSHIBA (2)1612 DVD-ROM
PLEXTOR 48X24X48 CDRW
PENT 4 HT 3.00C, 800 FSB, PENT 4 2.40 533 FSB
ASUS MOBO's P4P800SE (2)
1GB CRUCIAL PC3200 MEMORY, 1GB CRUCIAL PC2700
WESTERN DIGITAL 36GB RAPTOR HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR 200 GB HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR (2)250 GB HARD DRIVEs
MAXTOR 200 GB SATA HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR (2)120 GB HARD DRIVEs
MAXTOR 60 GB HARD DRIVE
ANTEC TRUE POWER430 WATT
ANTEC SLK2650 CASE, ANTEC SLK2600AMB CASE
CANOPUS ADVC-100 ANALOG TO DIGITAL CONVERTER
MAXTOR ATA -133 PCI CONTROLLER CARD PLEXTOR 708A DVDRW
PIONEER 107D DVDRW
LITEON 811 DVDRW
TOSHIBA (2)1612 DVD-ROM
PLEXTOR 48X24X48 CDRW
PENT 4 HT 3.00C, 800 FSB, PENT 4 2.40 533 FSB
ASUS MOBO's P4P800SE (2)
1GB CRUCIAL PC3200 MEMORY, 1GB CRUCIAL PC2700
WESTERN DIGITAL 36GB RAPTOR HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR 200 GB HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR (2)250 GB HARD DRIVEs
MAXTOR 200 GB SATA HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR (2)120 GB HARD DRIVEs
MAXTOR 60 GB HARD DRIVE
ANTEC TRUE POWER430 WATT
ANTEC SLK2650 CASE, ANTEC SLK2600AMB CASE
CANOPUS ADVC-100 ANALOG TO DIGITAL CONVERTER
MAXTOR ATA -133 PCI CONTROLLER CARD[/b]

I don't want to uninstall them as they are faster than the Microsoft ones and more specific to the hardware. Plextor has a DOS flash program on it's site I just need to know how to get that to work. My experience of windows flashing and killed drives means it's not a good thing to do. Windows flashing is bad practise anyway. A DOS flash must be possible, if not how does anyone rescue a drive from a bad flash? Does anyone know of a DOS flash program that will flash a plextor drive in place of the picky PXUpdate program?

RedDwarf

Even if there were such a thing as a third-party flashing program, how would it know what info to flash into the drive? Unless you also happen to have a textfile version of the firmware table (like a .cvt file) you're simply out of luck.

I'm guessing that the Plex DOS flasher assumes you have the correct ASPI drivers installed - as per my post above - before it can work. Not installed = won't work.

If you don't want to install the proper DOS drivers and don't want to remove the Nvidia Win IDE drivers and don't want to risk a flash with the Nvidia drivers ... you've painted yourself into a difficult corner.

Final suggestion: Uninstall the Nvidia drivers, flash the drive, re-install Nvidia drivers.

I would install any drivers necessary onto the DOS floppy that I boot from to flash the drive, that isn't a problem. It is just knowing what drivers that PXUpdate requires to function. I have tried the ASPICD.sys driver which is the one used to access IDE CD drives and that is functioning correctly (I can access the drive from DOS), I have it load aspi2dos.sys, aspi4dos.sys, aspi8dos.sys ans aspi8u2.sys on the floppy but all of these don't function as I don't have the hardware (SCSI controllers etc). But PXUpdate still complains that the ASPI drive is not found. I will check the microsaft link that you gave to find out whether I have missed anything off the floppy. I am using windows XP but I do have a win 98 PC here.

RedDwarf

Maybe you already tried this but have you started your machine with a simple Win98 or WinME start-up floppy disc? If your hard disks are still in FAT32 you will be able to boot from these floppy discs and they will load the IDE drivers. Then you can use PXUPDATE.EXE and flash your drive with the BIN-file. I have never used DOS to flash an optical drive before so that's pretty much all I can suggest