I have been lurking around and reading the postings from this forum for some time now. Having read the positive experiences and wise counsel given by the likes of Zevia, Danielwritesback, dishinit, rolling56, socrates007 and a host of others and having traced the experiences that insaneoctane, eleewhm, and others have had, I bit the bullet and ordered yesterday a Benq dw1620 retail version. Where I live these drives cost around $130 – so it wasn't a decision lightly made. First, I'd like to thank this forum for having, during the past few weeks, helped me to make an informed decision on my purchase – you don't know how important it is to get informed and expert advice you guys give out.

Now, I was wondering whether I could now trouble you all for some advice. Given that I have read some postings detailing problems people have had in installing their drive or getting their drive to work correctly, I was wondering whether you could advise me how I should install my drive, once I get it.

For your information my PC has an Intel Pentium 4, 2.67GHz cpu on an Asus P4PE motherboard running windows XP (Service Pack 2 installed). I have 528 mb memory (DDR 333) installed. My hard drive (120 GB) is divided into three partitions and I also have installed an internal asus cd burner (48x24x48) and a DVD Rom player (a Toshiba SD-M1712). I have PowerDVD XP (version 4.0) and Nero Express (5.5.10.x) also installed – both OEM's and came with my optical drives. More information (as from Neroinfo tool) is set out in the attached file .

What I would like to know is (i) what tips any of you have that I should follow in installing the Benq (please note that I am a bit of a newbie) (ii) would you recommend that I should uninstall any of my software like Nero or Powerdvd before installation/firmware updates? (iii) is it worthwhile installing the non Benq software that comes with the burner (ie the sonic record now and intervideo) – or should I upgrade my Nero to 6.6 and keep the powerdvdxp I have? (iv) I assume before installation I should defrag my hard disc and turn off my antivirus software – anything else?

Many thanks for all your advice and suggestions in advance. Oh and one last thing, I also bought with the DVD burner, 25 blank TEAC DVD + 8x media (which I understand has a media code of PRODISC.R03) – is this media good?

Again, many thanks.

well , recordnow works great but i usualy use nero. It is a good ideea to use only one coz many may give errors. I personaly have nero 66 and recordnow and never have any errors, but I heard lots of people having problems with multiple recording tools.

Regarding changing the firmware. For safe reasons , u might wanna do it in safe mode.
U might wanna keep it as master.
Regarding other Benq software. All work great .
For testing purpose u might wanna use cdspeed last version (it's free and preatty good)
Some other free software for riping and burning is dvddecryptor

About the media that u use. I also have prodisc R03 (eperformance) and u can easily overspeed to 12x with good quality(95 to 97)

Good luck

ramlin.

$130?? wow, I can get two retails that much... Anyway, I didn't install anything from the disk that comes with the drive. All I did was installed the drive and flashed with B7P9, that's it. My XP SP2 recognized it and ready to work.

My comp spec is in my sig, all of them are Dells. FYI, the comp with BenQ retail has two major burning software before I installed the benq: Nero 6.6 and Roxio 6, plus a couple of free ones (DVD Decryptor and DVD Shrink), and InterVideo WinDVD 5. They don't give me any problem.

I would recommend to update system BIOS, XP SP2 and Nero if you havent done so. THen when your drive arrived, I would recommend just pop it in the box. Since I assume your system is running smoothly now, I don't think it will be a problem installing your new drive. No need to uninstall softwares or turn off antivirus.

Edit: I just read your txt and you installed Intel Application Accelerator driver. I read a few times in this forum that IAA can cause software conflict. But lets dont panic first. Give it a try and if theres a conflict you know what to uninstall.

.....I live in Israel and the price of optical drives can be expensive...hence $130 price tag (and that was the cheapest!).

Given my set up (I already have two optical drives (A toshiba dvd rom drive and an asus cd burner - see also my original posting and neroinfotool attachment) - I was concerned about which IDE channel I should install the benq and whether it should be a master or slave - and whether my motherboard (asus P4PE intel 845 chip), has known conflicts with the drive.

Thanks

Asus P4PE here with no problems at all! Mine is secondary channel slave at this moment as I was too lazy to pull the dvd rom out and change jumpers.

The only difference is I uninstalled the Intel Application Accelerator driver ages ago since it conflicted with a NEC 3500 firmware upgrade. Never put it back in and have never missed it.

The best thing is just put the drive in and see what happens. Most problems are isolated incidents. As I don't think I've ever seen a thread about successful first time installs with no problems!

Good luck,
Scotty

You know, it's funny

I also live in Israel (I actually guessed that when i read the writer's price tag and about the TEAC spindle [Lamir?] ) and im in your exact situation. Actually, your post could have easily been mine (well, except for the software bit.. as a doom9 regular i know my burning/authoring/encoding/viewing software)

GL to the both of us i say

and of course, my deepest thanks go to all of this board's residents and experts as well

How come in Israel are the burners so expensive? Special custom taxes or why?
Here it is arround 70 bucks

yeah, i guess it's the taxes

you don't want to know how expensive cars are =)

Thanks for the advice Zevia - I had no idea I had that driver installed - how do I uninstall it and what does this driver do?


In Israel we have VAT (sales tax) at 17% and then you have the cost of import etc. In Israel I have only found three places that sell the Benq dw 1620 (many places sell NEC burners and at a good price as well - however, having read, time and again, Socrates007 praise of the benq (as well as the excelent support in this forum) and the fact that I didn't want to play with hacked firmware - I went for the benq). The place I bought my benq was an online shop called Lamir (as rightly guessed by venOm), they have a shop and they agreed to sell me the burner at their "cheap" online price! There was only one retailer I could find that sells the benq 1620 - and they wanted $150!

Anyhow, given what I have read in other postings, I think I'll upgrade my nero until version 6.6.3 has changed so it doesn't conflict with the burner. For burning music and data on cd's I'll rely on my trusted nero express 5.5.10 (unless anyone sees any problem here). For movies I'll use the RecordNow that will come with burner and use DVDShrink and DVDDecryptor. One other question here, I have raw Mpeg 2 files - can RecordNow burn them in DVD format?

Thanks again - and VenOm - please let me know how you burner works out