I have the same problem here. This started with my two(or so) years old Nec 3500 more than a year ago. It have suddenly stopped reading most burnt dvd-r discs. Other burners/readers/DVD players I tried read those discs fine. I have bought new Nec 4570 and it read those fine at first. But after some months it had same problem again. So I took it back where I bought it and they replaced it with Optiarc 7170 although I begged them to give me something not related to Nec. To my surprise (not really) half a year later I had same problem again.
All those three Necs had the same issues - after sometime they stop reading the same dvd-r discs under Windows XP (including good amount of Verbatims MCC 03RG20). Some -r are still readable but most arent. All +r are reading fine. As mentioned here I tried Isobuster and it is indeed can see contents of those discs and extract them. Havent tried reading them under Dos or Vista though. Also I tried messing with the drivers, registry, did clean Windows install, changed dma cables, checked it in different PCs with no apparent success. Thinking of getting another drive now (not Nec/Optiarc), but I am still not sure its a Nec issue.

I have had trouble with previous writers like the Pioneer 106D (that I still own and still use a cd writer). That drive is a 4x writer and it has trouble writing to most 8x media. It used to burn 8 media but would not play it after reinserting it. So when I couldn´t get 4x media anymore, I had to stop using it and bought the NEC.

That seems to be a different problem though as it didn´t give the DISC IS EMPTY message but Incompatible Medium Inserted or something like that.

I have friends who also had trouble writing to faster media that the drive was designed for, but that makes sense I suppose.

I will try ISOBUSTER for extracting these problematic discs. As I said in my case I am only having trouble with this batch of Taiyo Yuden TYG02.

I will keep checking other discs I burned in the past 5 years.

Just installed ISOBUSTER and I can see the contents of the problematic discs I burned a week ago.
Windows Explorer doesn´t see the disc and Decrypter says Disc is Empty.

Why is ISOBUSTER able to see the contents while Windows doesn´t???

Due to my 4 other non NEC drives reading all discs with no problems and only my NEC 3520 failing plus reinbach and others having failures with multiple NEC drives convinces me it is definitely a NEC drive issue. Isobuster seeing problematic -R contents may be a partial solution but is still no good for simply copying a few files, photos, etc. Easiest solution is to stay with +R media or get different brand burner.

bevills1: Do you have trouble will different media brands??

Did anybody contact NEC about this problem? There are reports about this problem that are almost 2 years old.

Because windooze gets its info about some quirked drivers or layers.
Isobuster directly.

yescool2002, it seems to be with all -R media. Same problems with Verbatim, Ridata, TDK, Optodisc, etc. Isobuster getting info directly explains why it works while Nero, DVDDecrypter, etc. fail, and this seems to indicate there's something that needs to be addressed by NEC since no other brands have such wide spread problems. I would guess it's something that should be able to be fixed through firmware, but no telling whether NEC will fix it.

I see. But is NEC aware of these problems????

Btw, I am only having the DISC IS EMPTY problem with this batch of TYG02.
But as I said I can write and read the RITEKF1.

And I also able to read lots of DVD-Rs I burned in the past with this same NEC drive.

Tonight I will test more of my old recordings.

well my 4550 cant even read dvd-r media even through Isobuster.

I am pretty sure that Nec is aware of these problems, but I really doubt that they are going to fix anything.

It may not be NEC's problem to fix. Given that most of these reported (bad drives) can read DVD-R under DOS, Win98 and Vista. Most of them only have a problem in XP.

Yes, I can read the problem discs under DOS and also ISOBUSTER reads them too.

i also found out that it reads DVD-R with less than 3gb data. Not 100% sure yet, but I ll do some further trying.

Not my case. I burned a TYG02 DVD-R disc with less than 2 GB of video and I cannot read it in Windows XP SP2.
It can be read fine in DOS or with ISOBUSTER/Power ISO.

However please note I am able to read some other brands (RitekF1 and other discs) that I burned with this same drive.

For the last 4 weeks I have burned exclusively TYG02 (can´t read them) and RITEKF1 (can read them)

I will buy some Verbatims and see if they can be read.

What brand are these TYG02??

TYG02 TAIYO YUDEN (silver top) 8x DVD-R, bought about 45 day ago from shop4tech.com

However I am able to read some other TYG02 (inkjet printable) that I burned 4 months ago.

Man, that is weird.

Could a drive cleaning help?

I haven´t tried to clean it but why would it read all other discs either burned by me or others I tried so far?

And why do RITEKF1 burned yesterday read fine?

I only seem to have trouble with this batch of TYG02 (silver top) so far.
And I get the Disc is Empty message just like most of you

the only disks i have are TDK DVD+R and TDK DVD-R from costco deals. they worked fine before but now they dont on my nec 3550a. this is only when using in my current windows xp sp2 setup. if i move the drive to another computer the disks work fine. if i try on another 3550 drive that is already in another computer it works fine also (all setups have windows xp sp2). this would leave me to believe its a windows xp / 3rd party software / registry problem with my specific setup. i haven't tried yet, but i bet if i installed a new dvd drive into the problem windows xp computer the disks would work fine as stated by a few people a couple posts up.

I believe it is NEC's problem to fix because I've seen no such wide spread problem with other brand drives including 2 different model Pioneers, 1 LiteOn and 1 Sony of mine. My theory is it has something to do with the way NT based systems including Win2k and WinXP are addressed by or do address firmware since that's how Windows recognizes and communicates with drives. Microsoft must have changed that somewhat with Vista since the problem seems to be non existent with Vista as it is with Win98. Therefore it's likely Microsoft might also be able to fix it through some update, but that's probably unlikely too since they are into Vista now and will probably be doing fewer fixes for Win2k and WinXP for which support will eventually be discontinued altogether like Win98 and earlier Windows.

Also I doubt it has anything to do with other software as suggested in post #119 since both my systems my NEC 3520 have been tried on are dual boot Win98/Win2k with same apps on both OSs except for a couple of apps that are for Win2k and higher only. The 3520 works fine in both systems in Win98 but doesn't read -R disks in either system booted to Win2k.

alright, but what could be the explanation for the fact that discs used to work fine and no longer do, always under XP??

Apparently this is not an SP2 problem as some people experience the problems under SP1 or even the original XP installation.

There have been many Windows updates since the release of SP2 for XP. The update doesn't necessarily have to do with IDE drivers, it could be any update that alters the system registry, perhaps overwriting some registry keys used by the IDE subsystem affecting UDMA and NEC drives or the IDE host controller they use on their drives.

Add to this, some people will be reporting this issue with faulty drives and or faulty media. I don't think this problem will be easliy fixed by any single party.

I have been checking some other discs I burned.
I found a Taiyo Yuden TYG02 (printable) that cannot be read.
But other TYG02 (printable) can be read.

All the Verbatims I tried so far can be read.

As before, I can see the contents using Power ISO/Isobuster

Same problems here, i've a 4550a, latest firmware, different medias, like Ritek (G05) and Verbatim (MCC 03RG20), Nero burns and verify those disk as usual, no errors if the disk still in the burner.
One i reinsert the fresh burned disk... you know... same messages in explorer, disk corrupt, the drive icon change in CD-RW and seems empty.
Probably Dee you are on the right way, it's not a NEC-ONLY issue, probably is something freaked in the registry, by some updates.
I'm not handy how datas flows thru the os/software, but using Isobuster, in demo, i can read all those disk that explorer refuses to accept, and it don't use the ASPI drivers but SPTI (Direct? is correct?)
Anyway i'm really bored about all those problems, i'll get a Pioneer112, 25 euro and the pain goes away.


elwood

That's a good question in your post #121 yescool2002. Also why is possible to get systems reading again only to have it fail again when there's difficulty in reading a disk as shown in post #68? Dee-27 is likely right about the problem not easily being fixed. Also I think elwood_mb is on the right track to buy other brand drives which is exactly why I got 2 Pioneer 111D drives when I encountered problems with the NEC 3520 drive and why I'll not get another NEC unless this complex issue is resolved.