first of all the only person ranting here is you. and he hasnt listen to some of my solutions because hes too busy listening to advice to get better media which isnt working, by the way. and given the limited details hes given, im throwing out some cost effective solutions that could fix his problem before he spends a fortune in media.
if you read what he is saying you would realize he has used these same discs with success before. so telling him the media he is using wont work is alittle hard to believe. i personally ignore people who tell me to use better media. it makes me believe that they dont have an indepth understanding of burning past the fact to tell people to use better media. all the solutions i offered can fix his problem if they are the problem(and they are possible problems). and eliminating the ones that arent the problem will lead to a solution.
He's probably not listening because you're bombarding him with info. Most of the ideas you suggest aren't bad, but clearly longonG is new to all this stuff, throwing out ideas without links or information is only going to confuse him more. He never said his old backups were the same media. Even if they are, it could be a side effect of low grade media wearing down his PS2. He's confirmed that he's using CMC Mag, which is the most likely cause. Ochm's Razor= the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. That's my guiding principle in help forums. I'm not criticizing your efforts to try and help him. That's good, more people should be willing to help. But what I see is you jumping to conclusions prematurely. The least likely cause is the hardware. He needs to rule out the media first off, I'm almost certain that's the issue. If you take offense to this, my apologies. I will always give my honest opinion on stuff.
man, im not taking offense to anything you're saying. i could care less. but what i have done is pay attention to what is going on. yes he has used the same memorex with success before. he even tried some other media (didnt mention the name of the media, though). he has reinstalled dvd decrytpter. checked to make sure he was in dma mode and not pio. his old backups still work right (the ones with memorex). so its not looking like a media problem when you try more than one media abd they both didnt work. burners shouldnt be that picky.
there is a possibility that another brand of media might work. but finding that media will be a trial and error process. case in point, i was trying to backup star wars battlefront and couldnt get it to run properly with verb DVD-R on my sony burner (it was choppy). i took a chance on sony DVD+R and the game worked great. but according to most people, verbs are good quality media. but media is dependent on the burner you are using. so quality media to you might not be quality media for me. and i found out later on that my ps2 needed some laser adjustments to better read dvdrs. and some of those games that ran choppy before now were playable.
It's all good man, I know you're trying to help, which is more than I can say for most peeps. I would recommend he eliminate the media first, then move forward to firmware, cleaning, etc. Media is somewhat of a trial and error process, but 8x Taiyo Yuden's and Verbatim's have a 95% success rate across the board. I've never had a coaster in 300+ burns with TY's. Burners aren't that picky, but the PS2 is. There's no advantage to using low grade media. If you wonder why peeps recommend it as the number one fix, it's because crap media is far and away the number one cause of boot failures. I would guess at least half of all boot failures would be resolved by quality media. That's a conservative estimate. In reality it's probably more like 75%. Btw, if those Sony DVD+R's you used are made in Japan, they're Taiyo Yuden's. What's the Media ID of those Sony DVD+R's?
the sony were ricoh. and the verbs were mcc. i was about to point out that taiyo yuden is a manufacturer and verbatim is a brand name. but anyway, finding the absolute best media isnt that important in cases where multiple games arent working and two different dvdrs where used. at least one of the games should have worked.
@LoNgOnG
are you still there? give some more details if you can.
Not if both brands are low quality, especially CMC Mag. Top notch media makes a big difference. That's coming from pro modders, burn enthusiaists and my own personal experience. There's never any reason to use low grade media. You can get Taiyo Yuden's or Verbatim's online for cheaper than CMC Mag, and they're 99% reliable in the right hands. What I fear is noobs reading your post and saying, "oh quality media doesn't matter", then wondering why their backups don't work. Quality media is the number one fix for boot failures, and imperative for successful backups. Peeps can believe me or not, I'm not pursuing this any further.
