Hello!

I've been reading and was doing my research on the BenQ before I purchased one. Thanks for all the great info here!

There is one thing I don't understand. If the OEM and BenQ firmware are the same level G7P9 and B7P9, why bother to cross flash? Does this REALLY accomplish something other than how the drive appears in windows? Does it affect the way it burns, make it burn more reliably etc?

Also, I purchased some Sony [D11 apparenly] - 8x rated +Rs since I read in this forum that the BenQ liked +Rs better than -Rs [tho I realize thats changing with new firmware]. I've been playing with QScan on a few of the media - from what I'm seeing I'd say these Sony media are crap. Is this true in general of Sony media or did I just get a bad spindle or a bad drive or ? [BTW my drive is at G7P9 right now]. Due to a slower older system [dual Pentium 3, 600's], I can't burn at over 8x. I burned a DVD tonight that took 26 mins to finish on the Sony +Rs. As far as I can tell its a good burn, but it just took forever.

Thanks in advance,
Chad

On such an old system, there is a possibility (with a Via chipset) that you need to enable or disable the UDMA in BIOS. If, in fact you have Via, check www.viaarena.com because you may need older drivers, or you may need to uninstall the IDE section of the VIA drivers to use the Microsoft default. Test.

I will proceed assuming that the drive is Single Master on the secondary IDE controller, using a new and high quality 80 wire cable. Noting that you have a generic model that does not ship with an 80 wire UDMA cable in the box, I would check first that you have not installed with an old cable.

The drive controller (in bios) should be set so that secondary master is on auto detect and auto type. This will facilitate UDMA. Also, check the onboard controller settings to make sure that UDMA=ON. Check Windows Device Manager, secondary IDE controller to see that it is using UDMA 2 (for XP). In any case, Windows DMA should be ON. If this works, your drive will run full speed.
Test before proceeding.

(next, test for incompatible mainboard by disabling UDMA in favor of Windows DMA)
If it still takes forever to burn, then set (in BIOS onboard IDE options) UDMA=off for secondary master and UDMA=off for secondary slave. Test.
If necessary to force it off, set (in BIOS standard options) secondary master=none (but that is specific to mainboards that do not have direct control over the UDMA settings AND you will not be able to boot from CD).
In this case, double check to make sure that DMA=on for windows--Multi-Word DMA 2 for XP. This will give you 8x, about 7 minutes.

You can also delete all of the drive controllers from Windows Device Mangler and then restart. This will cause a reinstall of the IDE driver software. Restart again. Test.

Do scan your blank discs with Q-scan. Sometimes burning at 4x will give you 13 minute burn with much better quality. See what BenQ's Q-scan says about this.

If you have done either of the above hardware tests, then reset the CMOS for best performance. Be fast with the delete key and boot directly into the BIOS. Choose "optimized defaults" before any customizing. Once again, set the BIOS options to the condition that worked best for you.
Windows will go a little kooky on the first boot. Start up. Shut down. Start up. All done!

OH! Have you tried using the free combination of DVD-Shrink plus DVD-decryptor?
When backing up movies, have Shrink read them, then automatically send to DVD-Decryptor for writing. While the reading stage could take a while because of compression, writing should take 7 minutes on 8x or 13 minutes on 4x.