I write this primarily in the hopes that it helps someone else, who might find it by searching this forum, or googling for it.

I downloaded the trial version of Anydvd, and tried to use it for a few days, but whenever I tried the combo of Anydvd and Clonedvd2, Clonedvd2 always halted between 5 and 25 percent into the backup with the error message that the DVD was encrypted.

Now, Clonedvd2 was *beginning* the copy fine,and I could even watch the opening of the movie in the Clonedvd2 preview window, so I knew that it was decrypting, at least, at first.

I searched this forum, other forums, and googled similar issues with anydvd. My trial period with anydvd and clonedvd2 was almost over,and I needed to solve this quickly.

I uninstalled Nero, uninstalled anydvd and clonedvd2, and rebooted, reinstalled anydvd and clonedvd2, no help.

I searched the win registry for references to Nero, and edited them out...(I hate editing the registry)..no help.

I tried anydvd with safe mode off and on, no help.

Tried uninstalling various programs on my drive which might have a conflicting low-level driver, no help.

I use windows server 2003, and my drive is a TDK DVDRW0404N with 1.08 firmware.

I did a clean install of windows server 2003, but still no help.

Discovered that there is a 1.09 firmware for my drive, and flashed it--no help.

I got an NEC version of firmware for my drive and flashed it, no help, so I flashed my drive back to tdk 1.09.

Late at night, I enabled logging for anydvd,and tried reading the logs. I used to be a software tester,and while I'm no expert on anydvd, I could read the logs ok. It seems that anydvd does a *lot* of communication with the dvd drive,and it just seemed to time out for some reason. Tired, I went to bed.

Ok, it's a new day. I bought the combo of anydvd and clonedvd2--why did I buy it if it wasnt working? Well...1) this forum and others have a lot of glowing reviews of anydvd/clonedvd2, 2) I had a $10 off discount code that expired that day.

On the Anydvd home page, I note that Windows Server 2003 isnt listed as officially supported...this is almost never a problem for windows server 2003, but I was trying all options, so
I installed Win XP as a dual boot on my machine--no luck.

I switched video drivers..I used the hacked video drivers from www.omegadrivers.net for my ATI card, and I switched back to the official release.

Actually, this combo of XP and different drivers, this seemed to help Clonedvd2 a bit...it consistently went further with the disc..but still failed about 30%...randomly from 20% to 40% now.

Thinking I was on the right track, I switched video cards, from an ATI to a NVIDIA...no help.

Finally, I borrowed another external DVD drive from a friend of a friend. This is a HP DVD 740e USB...and it too failed in a similar fashion.

Well, finally, FINALLY, this was actually the key to my troubles. And i'm sure that other old salts have figured out the trouble by now too.

2 different drives are failed in a similar fashion, and remember, I said, anydvd does a lot of communication with the DVD drive. When I bought the drive 1 1/2 year ago, I just got a cheap, no name, $12 usb2 pci card. With normal operation, the card did fine. But with anydvd talking to the drive so much, while it was streaming the data to the hard drive, the usb2 card couldnt keep up,and started to simply timeout to anydvd and/or the drive. Anydvd didnt really know why the drive stopped...hence it's 'the disc is encrypted' error.

So, I went to Compusa...and got a name brand usb2 pci card for $40ish, it's a Belkin, and all problems solved.

Actually, the friend of a friend said he didnt need the hp drive, so I bought it for $20 from him, so I guess something good came from it.

I dont write this with anger towards anyone: not slysoft, not even the makers of the $12 usb card (after all, it worked fine for a long time until i asked it to do more than it's strict definition of performance).

I only hope that this helps someone who has a similar issue that cannot get anydvd to work properly on their system.

thanks for all the testing & figuring out you did there, this may help a few people

And welcone to cdfreaks

Very nice first post!! Many welcomes to the forum!!

Not wanting to sound stupid or nothing but what is a usb2 pci card .

lol never mind i always called them a internal usb hub. very ggod read though .

it's a pci card that gives you USB2, if your M/B only has USB1.1

edit: too slow

That was a Great post! , That just goes to show - If at first you don't succeed try, try again...

Thanks for the kind words, all!

is almost like a fairy tale
Grim Bros tales

@tmcdill:
This was a very informative post. I will tell our support people about your findings. Thank you for taking the time to writing it down.