Anyone have any experience of the HP DVD 940e? I did do a quick search but couldn't find anything.

Do HP drives have a good or bad reputation in general?

FYI this is where I've seen it for sale

Most likely there's an LG GSA-H12L drive inside that HP enclosure (18X +/-R, 8X DL, 12X RAM, LightScribe). HP drives are often rebadged LG's (and can be crossflashed as such), so they're generally fine units.

That's good news, I'm quite fond of my E10L, it hasn't made a coaster yet.

HP drives are often rebadged Liteon's now, 940e is rebadged Liteon's 18A1H.

It can be both (with a different suffix in the Drive ID), if you've seen it as a Lite-On, crocjoe. This is definitely an LG (same pic as on dabs.com in first post):

Just for reference...

crocjoe is correct. It's a rebadged Lite-On LH-18A1H in fact. The LG GSA H12L will work with Patin-Couffin V.1.36, but the HP 940e and the Lite-On LH-18A1H won't. That's the reason why VSO had to update the Patin-Couffin driver to v.1.37.

Hello Fellers,
Have just purchased an HP940i and the serial printed on the casing is LIT-SH-16A7H. It's supposed to be an 18X drive, so interesting to see the manufacturer code refers to it as a 16. Anyway, is definitly a Lite-on as same code format as their drives.
I had precisely one day of good burning with it (v.noisy on software installations I thought compared to my old LG) before my son F****d it by 'making it multiregion' by using the old rpcde2 utility. This worked fine years ago for our old Pioneer and Aopen drives, and guess he thought it would work on the HP too. Wrong! Doh...
Anyway, rather than start a new thread I thought I'd pop my query on the tail of this as may be useful for others with an HP.
Having got the continual flashing light that indicates a screwed chip, I grabbed the Eeprom utility to correct the checksum (thinking this would be easiest method of recovery) and sadly no go. Naturally Hewlett-Packard offer no help but I'm wary of flashing a wrong firmware back to the drive, so wonder if anyone can give a clue of whether a Lite-on firmware can be patched and applied or if there is other means of recovery? Worse come to worst I'll buy another and save the unblemished .bin and flash it to the duff drive. As it's a Lite-on, sure I'll be able to find a buyer, but I'd like to avoid the hassle! Cheers!

Well, just to tie up my contribution to this thread, I will thank crocjoe muchly for uploading his firmware, HL05. Genius.
I thought 'what the hell' and flashed over the original corrupted Hewlett Packard firmware with this.
Hey, it worked, no dramas. Now recognized as a Lite-On, but that's fine.
Decrypted & ripped a DVD to disc in 12mins, burned it in under five. That's good enough for me. Not tried the Lightscribe, not interested. But yeah, even after two days, I'm happy with the output and performance of this unit although it is noisy as it loads up and reads a disc, I figure this is just a byproduct of the technology and not a fault.
Good drive otherwise, and as proved, definitely my HP940i was a 18A1H too.
Cheers!

Bonus, thanks for the info mate. I might pick myself one up in the new year.

LED/Emergency Eject hole position will indicate which of the two you've got, LG or Lite-On.

Mr. Cat, what utility did you use to flash your HP940i to a Lite-on?

I would like to flash my HP940i to the Lite-on firmware to allow booktype bit to be set.

I have tried various utilities from http://codeguys.rpc1.org/ without any luck. They all seem to not recognize my HP drive.

Thanks!

Hello,
I used the flash utility and instructions out of this thread: http://club.cdfreaks.com/f44/flash-utility-liteon-based-optical-drives-v3-0-3-a-190420/
As you probably noted from the pics above, Hewlett-Packard have also outsourced build to LG. I've acquired an LG GSA-H22N drive also and that has the characteristic four 'dips' in the top shell as reflected in the pics uploaded by Cressida. On my 940i the LIT serial coding on the info sticker to the top shell is also easy to spot, and as Cressida says the LED\emergency eject are in different places as the pics show.
I would reckon if you've powered up the Codeguys' Flash Utility and it doesn't give you the option to READ the firmware, then you have an LG.
I won't claim to be an expert on this, but maybe different suppliers are shipping different specs? I'm in the UK, and acquired my 940i from Ebuyer.com but it's possible Ebuyer in USA source from the same place.
All I can say is that I was lucky my HP was a Lite-On because it doesn't appear as if there is an equivalent easy-to-use utility for the LG.

Hey I am new one here and I have serious problems with my NEW dvd burner...
It dont want to read...when I put cd od dvd my comp blocks...and it dont want to copy dvd videos..I can go on ...but I dont know where is the problem..I tryed almost everything

It is

HP 940i dvd burner (but in nero info tools and other programs is shown as 940d with firmware 3h23)

I checked the serial on box>
s/n>223642408.... MOdel> dvd940i-H08


I dont know what to do....I tryed everything...and I found this

So what to do???

I want to buy an external DVD with lightscribe and I'm trying to decide which one to go with? The HP DVD940E with Nero or the Mad Dog MD-18XTLAE with Roxio 8.2 XE. I been using Roxio for years so not sure about Nero but I also have never heard of the Mad Dog name? I also know I can upgrade my Roxio to version 9 (with 100 new features from 8 as they put it ) for as little as $60. I am unable to find much by the way of reviews on either? Anyone have any recommendations? Anyone used either? Thanks in advance!

Hi

I have also bought one of these HP DVD940e and would like to know how to change it to do booktype?

From looking at the pics I have the Lite-on drive.

Terry

CroDownloader; you say you tried everything, but what have you tried?
Something I have known to happen with past builds is for the jumper on the back of the writer to need changing. Sounds daft, but give you examples - had a Pioneer DVD-Rom and Lite-On CD-writer on the secondary IDE of an MSI mobo but Pioneer HAD to be set as master. Would not work as slave to the Lite-On. On a newer MSI mobo had an LG DVD-writer that would only work if the jumper was set to cable select; wasn't interested in working at all if it was set to master or slave. It was recognized in the OS, and powered up, but just not interested in reading any discs... A lot depends on the mobo IDE controller and how it understands the instructions passed back to it from the writer, so if you can test it in a mate's puter I'd say to do so before sending it back as faulty. (edit: whoops, see you wrote that a couple weeks ago... oh well...)
freedaddy; As discussed above, difficult to know if in buying the HP you get the LiteOn or the LG, but both very good drives if you check out the respective reviews here at CDFreaks. The MadDog as far as I'm aware is a Samsung. As for the software, I'd avoid Nero 7 but the last version of Nero 6 is quite stable and flexible. Been years since I used Roxio, so can't comment. All depends what you need to do. For me, I tend to rip a DVD to hdd and use ImgBurn on the burn. Very simple stuff. For data burns, I go through the Nero wizard. Using Verbatim and Sony discs on my HP I've had no fails. Much as I can offer mate!

Hi,

I have a new Hewlett Packard DVD940i Writer purchased Dec 06 - I'm having real problems with this new installed DVD Writer. (Printed on HP Writer ID label, Model DVD 940i - H08. Manufactured Sept 2006)

It's supposed to play/record to any type of disc and even has Lightscibe capabilities (Not tried that yet though) but I'm only having a 50% play success rate with some NEW purchased R2 Movies. "Pirates of the Carribean"/"Gladiator"/"TransAmerica" etc. the drive just won't recognise these R2 discs even though they can be played on my old Pioneer A05 drive and my Panasonic DMR-EX75EB DVD Recorder. The message I receive through Nero Tools is "No Disc Inserted", and a faint whining noise from the DVD drive itself. Although it will play R2 discs like "The Deerhunter" /"Ice Age 2" etc.

I have tried the HP helpdesk, waste of time, no response after 3 attempts.

I installed the Nero software that came with the unit and from the Nero website, downloaded all updates and the DVD940i is set to play Region 2. The HP website has no firmware updates on the DVD940i, the Firmware version displayed in Nero Tools says its 3H23. Does anyone know if this is the latest version ???. My old Pioneer worked a treat and would play all types of R2 movies.

The Jumper is set to "Master", the same as the old replaced Pioneer writer. I have removed and reinstalled the unit and checked that all cable connections are secure

My Computer Information is:
Microsoft Windows XP (SP.2)
Intel Pentium 4 - 2.4 GHz
Memory Installed: 1.0GB RAM
SoundCard: SoundMAX Digital Audio
Video Capture Device: NVIDIA GeForce 4Ti 4200

Also I have found that trying to burn to Dual Layer discs is a 50/50 hit and miss success rate!. Sometimes burning will just abort on these types of disc. But I am having 100% success rate on burning to DVD-R at 16x speed and to CD at 48x speed.

What's going on!!!, their must be a setting or a reason for these problems. I have installed writer in a 2nd computer with the same problems, Crazy !!!

Does anyone else out their have this drive or similar problems to the ones that I am experiencing. Any advice or information would be greatly received as I am pulling my hair out trying to get the problems resolved.

The HP 940i is a 18A1H, isn't it? These new LiteOn drives are very bad readers. I tried the 18A1H and the 20A1P, both had the same problems in recognizing discs. There's a reason these drives have no DVD Video logo because they are not even full DVD compatible!

Ageha, thanks for that, I think it must be 18A1H as well

Do you think using the flash utility mentioned in above discussions might solve my problems???

I don't think a newer firmware will solve the reading problems. My 20A1P was build two months later and had a newer firmware but it had still the same problems than my 18A1H before. A Fried of mine has the 20A1H which is even newer and it still cannot recognize the same pressed discs every other 20 Pound discount DVD player can read. The drive is a grood writer but it fails when it comes to reading.

Ok, so I bought the HP 940e. Just to test, I installed Nero 6 on my laptop (1.2Ghz Centrino, 512MB) and successfully burned a CD no problem. However, I wasn't so impressed with the features (or lack of) in Nero 6. I was able to burn quickly and pain free, but had to hunt on how to edit the long audio track like I wanted to. The most important thing is that it did all work! I then installed Roxio 9 on my Desktop (1.7Ghz, 1GB) which is where I'd like to do all my burnining ultimately. I feel in love with how easy Roxio 9 is and it fully loaded. I love the Sound Editor, it blows away Nero 6s! However, it only made 14% through my burn and bailed! I then went and installed Nero 6 just to compare and it bailed after 14% of the burn too! So something else must be up!?

A couple other things that may be worth noting is that I do have a 2nd internal DVD ROM and and a 3rd TDK DVD burner, but I wouldn't think that would matter? As well the model # that shows up is "HP 940d" vs. the expected "HP 940e" (I don't recal what showed up on the laptop now that I think about it) and the firmware is: 3H23. The other major issue is that the whole PC is way slow! I get the stupid long waving flashlight every time I open Exploder (I have been for months). More importantly, any of the Roxio products are refreshing at a very slow rate, etc.

So I'm desperate for ideas?! I'm to the point to where I'm ready to invest a couple hours in doing a format C: and reinstalling XP! If I go that route, any recommendations on where I could go for info on how I could shorten that task vs. starting from my SP1 disc and having to install the umpteen hotfixes before I'm live?

Thanks in advance!

On HP's site, I found out why the "d" shows up instead of the expected "e".

"HP uses different hardware manufactures, and suffix used in Device Manager is only there to assist in determining the correct firmware is used for the recorder."

The entire FAQ can be found here.

Hope it saves someone else some confusion.

"It does not indicate that the device is anything other than a 640."
But... "HP uses different hardware manufactures."

I just got a HP dvd 940i too.
Manufacturer = HP
Product Type = DVD Writer 940d
Firmware Version = 3H23
Firmware Date = 2006/09/02

I also have an old Lite-on (LDW-401S) so I have all the utility programs for it.

I used KProbe 2.5.2 on the 940i and it ran all the tests. It also says it has the SmatBurn function and shows the ROM info :
FlashROM Manufacturer ID EF
FlashROM Device ID 14
FlashROM Type NEX(NX25P16)

Bit setting & region setting also appear as though they might work but I didn't try them. My Pioneer DVR-109 responds to very little of this from Kprobe by comparison. Other Lite-on utilities worked on the 940i like SmartBurn & BookType.

What would be the advantage in flashing the 940i to a LH-18A1H ?

BillM