I bought a SONY DVD burner Model DRX-830U at Best Buy. It worked until I tried to use DVD Shrink. After that my computer (a dell) would recognize the drive but I wasn't able to do anything with the drive. If a CD or DVD was in the drive the computer would tell me that there was nothing in the drive. The button on the drive wouldn't work to open the door to the drive and the there was no way I could open the drive except by putting a paper clip in the little hole just below the tray that come out to open the drive so I could get the disk back.
In an effort to get the drive to work I removed the DVD Shrink program from my computer but the drive still doesn't work. Does anybody out there know anything about this problem?
I bought the internal version of your drive (DRU-830a), also from bestbuy and so far seems to be working properly. Try disconnecting the usb cable from your PC and then unplug the drive's DC supply for 10 seconds. Plug in the drive's DC supply and then reinsert the usb cable, the drive should be reinstalled/recognized by the OS. Try opening the drive's tray, if it opens, try playing a DVD/CD to see if it's recognized correctly.
If after trying what I suggested, the drive still doesn't work, return it to bestbuy and exchange it for another.
Actually I already tried what you just mentioned before and it didn't work. And this in my second Sony DRX-830U. This same thing happened to the previous one two days ago. So yesterday I exchanged it for a new oe thinking that there was something wrong with that particular DVD drive. I'll be more specific in what happened. After I installed DVD Shrink I put a DVD movie (the movie SAHARA) into the DVD drive. I then clicked on open disk on DVD Shrink. After that a meesage popped up saying that the region needes to be set. It gave me the only choice of region 1 ( the USA). All the other regions were grayed out. After I clicked on "okay" DVD Shrink said it could not read the disc. So then I went to go eject the disc, by pressing the eject button on the side of the DVD drive, but it would not eject the disk. I noticed that the green light on the drive was on and staying lite. In the owner's manual this means that the drive it busy. Also, I can't just exchange this one (my second drive) for another because Best Buy probably will start getting suspicious of why I am returning their stuff.
Using DVDshrink shouldn't cause your drive to fail, if you're still unable to open the tray door I would return it again and complain, bestbuy should have no problem with giving you a replacement (there may be an issue with this model).
If you do get a replacement, the first thing I would do is to update it's firmware (that's what I did before trying to use mine), the current version is "Firmware Upgrade Version SS22", click on the link and get/apply the update;
You can do a full disk or main movie copy (I would do a main movie copy only, I don't like all the extra junk), once DVDFab is done, you can burn the files to disk using your favorite burning application (like the Nero software you got with the drive).
yeah I think i'm going to just return it. I called tech support and they think it is better to just return it. thanks though. I did the firmware update and it somewhat made the drive work (it now opened) but then it would not read or play any DVD's or CD's.
I just purchased the Sony DRX-830U external drive today and experienced the same identical problem as echo12dg did. It worked fine until I tried to use DVD Shrink. The drive stopped functioning and it would not even open. I was frustrated until I read your post. It was like a play by play of my situation. I even tried the firmware upgrade, but experienced the same thing as you did. It will now open, but fails to read any CD/DVD's. I am less than impressed with this drive and am taking it back to best buy.
