Ask A Geek

Q: Should I use SATA drives or IDE drives if I want the best DVD burning performance?

A: IDE is the older technology that allows 2 disks per channel but it means that one drive is a master and one drive is a slave. Both the drives have to compete to pass their data on the channel. So if you wanted to burning in this setup the best way to do it is to have the hard drive you will be burning from on one channel as the master and the DVD burner on another channel as the master. This will make sure the data can get where it needs to go. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: I have Windows XP home running with a rock 775vm800 mother board, Pentium 4 processor, 80 GB hard drive with 1.5 GB ram. I want to add a DVD burner to the board. Is it best to go IDE or SATA. The board will support up to 4 IDE devices or 2 SATA. Which is the best setup for burning DVDs?

Q: My computer has started to act weird recently and I am far from computer savvy. I have windows vista home premium. When I place a blank DVD into the computer, the normal pop up comes up which asks me if I want to burn a DVD using windows, media player, or movie maker.

I proceed to the formatting stage but now all of a sudden it says that my DVD can not be formatted what so ever! I tried movie maker and windows media but they have different reasons why I can not burn my movie. It all has to be stemming from the same thing right? All of them have worked previously so that is why I am assuming that. Nvidia was recently removed from my computer somehow and maybe that has something to do with it? A after I shut down my computer they asked me to reinstall it and I did.

Q: I recently got a DVD writer for my older Presario laptop running Windows XP. The laptop already has Roxio on it and the new device came with Nero. I am wondering if can have both installed at the same time without conflict?

Q: I have a question about my CD-DVD rom. It was working fine until I was burning a DVD and had an disc writing error and it did not complete writing my disc. Since then my drive will not read any discs. I can hear it spinning and when I eject the disc drive ,the disc is in a diff. position then when i put it in, so I know its rotating.

I just replaced the drive not even last year with a lite-on CD and DVD burner because the gears stripped out of my original and hate to have to take it back in.

I had downloaded a couple of videos and that was what I was trying to put on the DVD’s. Could that have screwed up a program or messed my drive up?

I also downloaded a couple of programs like avsconverter and a few more converters but after my comp started doing this I uninstalled them and tried to even do a system restore but nothing works. Could the eye in my drive be dirty or getting hung up?

When I try to read the disc in my burning software it keeps saying the drive is busy and won’t read it. I have also tried to play different discs in other programs like opening the drive from my comp and it pops my the tray out and tells me to insert a disc and when i push it back in it freezes my program up and they say so and so’s not responding then I push the tray open and they work fine again.

Q: I had a Pioneer 104 DVD burner but it died so I got a Pioneer 109 DVD burner. After installation my computer says that the DVD burner is a CD burner. The funny thing is that it ripped a DVD but it won’t burn it! I have Windows XP and It’s an internal DVD burner.