Hello there. This is my first post so I thought I'd introduce myself here too. :)
I'm Mike, I'm 20 and I live in the UK. After pratting around on the forum for my answers and being unable to find them, I thought I'd sign up and ask for help. I won't miss anything out so I'm sorry if this post is long.
Anyway, around two weeks ago I got into the 360 game backup malarkey because my friends are terrible with my discs. We play quite a few games in here (I'm the only one with a 360) and dual layer DVDs are much cheaper to replace than games.
To the point, I have a 360 BenQ drive flashed with iXtreme 1.51 and it works a treat. I'm lucky and have an Nforce chipset onboard so it all went smoothly. I bought myself a Samsung TS-H353B drive to compliment it too which I then flashed with the latest Kreon firmware available. (1.00) To burn the discs there is an LG GGC-H20L BluRay burner.
Anyhoo everything was going well until today. I have only ever used the TS-H353B (or SH-D163B if you like) with 360 discs as I never saw the need to put anything else in there as there's a better drive above it. Anyway as I was working on the PC I noticed the drive was set to region 1, so I went to change it to region 2, when Windows did it's usual stint of telling me I needed a local DVD in the drive. Being a lazy bugger I couldn't be bothered to get a DVD and just canceled it so technically nothing was changed. That's the last time the drive worked.
It now refuses to acknowledge any media I place in the drive. CDs, DVDs of the movie and 360 variety are all unknown to the thing. I went to backup one of my games (CoD4 to be exact) and the drive just sat there with the green light flashing, and I left it for a good 30 mins to be safe. The game backup creator refused to open, and the PC locked the drive completely. Though the drive was going spaz, I still had use of the PC and just shut it down rather than manually open it and risk my game.
First I tried reflashing the drive. The flash went fine but it still refused to read any discs. Fine, I thought I'd try and flash it with some firmware SH-D163B off the Samsung site. The flash also took.
This time the drive would spin up but also spin down again and not lock, but Windows still insists there's nothing there and tells me to insert something.
Next step, flash the drive with the original TS-H353B firmware. The results are the same as the SH-D163B firmware. Drive spins up, sees nothing apparently, spins down. I found a few firmwares out there so I started with the oldest and worked my way up. Still nothing.
It's not windows as if I leave a bootable disc in the drive the PC hangs long before it gets to the OS. In desperation, I tried it in a friends PC and it still does the same thing.
Damn.
So... does anybody have any ideas? I'm not sure why I'm bothering as I can easily have another drive here by tomorrow for £12 ($18.21)+P&P but I'd appreciate not having to shell out more cash what with being a student and all.
Is this a common fault with the drive? I hadn't read anything about not putting movies in the drive. Did I screw up?...
Originally posted by msremmert: Anyway as I was working on the PC I noticed the drive was set to region 1, so I went to change it to region 2
Have you tried setting the drive back to Region 1 to see if it works? That's the only thing I can think of that would be causing the drive to all of a sudden stop working. If that doesn't work, then I don't know what else you could do?!
Hi there.
Already tried that but thanks for the suggestion. :)
The drive never actually changed from region 1 to region 2. I canceled the process before I'd even put a region 2 disc in the drive. In theory I never changed anything but something has upset the drive. It just refuses to read optical media all together. The drive hardware could have failed rather than it be a firmware issue I guess. Shame really.
I feel it might be worth just getting another drive and using this one as a fancy new door stop.
Sounds to me like the drive just died. The laser probably. Since those drives are relatively cheap (for you anyway.. They're like $50 here) I'd suggest just getting a new one.
Some things are worth trying to save, and some aren't.
Alright, cheers for the replies. Yeah I was surprised how much you guys in the states have to cough up. I just Googled and it turned out the main retailer I use for all my PC components sold it.
I'm just going to buy a new one near the end of the week. Got exams to work for and if I buy the drive I'll just prat around with it!
Hello again. Sorry to dig up this now old(ish) thread but I thought it was worth me updating.
The thought of reinstalling windows fills me with horror. I have the resources here to do it, but I'm at university and I desperately need my PC running 100%. Besides, it's incredibly reliable at present and is spot on the way I like it. Makes a nice change really. Besides the drive was dead before I got into the OS so it certainly wasn't Windows.
A new drive got here just before the bank holiday weekend (do you get them in the States? It's basically a 3 day weekend here) and my local retailer was nice enough to send me another TS-H353B to fight with rather than the SH-D163B I was hoping for. No matter. Anyway, first thing I did was test it with a DVD. It worked. :)
Next came the updating. Did the nocheck option as always, the update bar made it to 100% and the PC hung. Oh good. I even left it for 30 mins to play it safe. Anyway I restarted it and the darn thing refused to even see the drive. The bios sat there fondling itself while asking me what the hell this strange device on SATA port 5 was. Windows wouldn't even boot and after trying to boot into safe mode I noticed it crashed when trying to load the drive drivers database. Then I had an idea.
I swapped out the now totally dead drive for the half dead drive so the PC would actually get into Windows. I then loaded the flashing program and configured it as though I were going to flash it with the Kreon firmware. Just before hitting the flash button, I swapped the drives round. My assumption was the flashing software was retarded.
Windows responded positively and after a restart I now have a fully functioning drive again.
To me, the fact it works is nothing short of a miracle.
I just wanted to tell somebody as I know my flat mates wouldn't understand. :)
