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I have been using my Ricoh MP9120A CD-RW/DVD drive on my MSI 6373 motherboard without problem for a few months now.

Yesterday, I went to burn an audio CD with Easy CD Creator 5.1 and it just hung the CD burner. Easy CD Creator showed that it was writing the TOC, but the drive light wasn't on, and I couldn't get Easy CD Creator to abort the burn, nor could I eject the drive.

Thinking Easy CD Creator was to blame, I tried Vertias's RecordNow MAX 4.0. It wouldn't even start the burn. It complained of a communication error.

I then tried Nero 5.5.7.8 and it also complained of a communication error.

I tried lowering the burn speed from the MAX of 12x to 8x and then 4x. No dice.

Then I disabled writing the CD-TEXT, and it burned without problem. I have no problems burning CDs with any software program as long as I don't try writing CD-TEXT.

Nero and RecordNow MAX both report that the drive can read/write CD-TEXT - and I have written CD-TEXT before under Windows 98 on my old configuration. But under Windows XP on this motherboard, it wouldn't write.

So I tried disabling DMA mode on the CD-R drive, forcing it into PIO mode only. I could then burn audio CDs with CD-TEXT without any errors. Of course the system slows to a crawl while the CD is burning.

Has anyone experienced something similar or heard about a problem like this? Where you can burn CDs with no problems at all, but in order to burn CD-TEXT audio CDs, you have to disable DMA mode???

Seems very odd. This is the first CD-R problem I have had with the drive on the motherboard and am wondering how I might be able to fix it.

For reference, I have an Athlon 1.4 GHz processor with 512 MB Crucial PC2100 RAM on the motherboard. I am using BIOS 2.1. I have the Adaptec ASPI layer installed.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Disable XP's own burning engine. (Search the forum for instructions. Ian, we really need a comprehensive FAQ!)

Flash the drive with the new firmware, if available.

Report the problem to Ricoh's technical support.

lol.. yeah we need FAQ's for a lot of stuff. Feel free to write one up.

From Feurio's Version History (http://www.feurio.com/English/history_1_60.shtml):

Problem: IDE-CD-Writer, DMA and CD-TEXT:
Unfortunately there have been several problems with IDE-CD-Writers, if DMA mode is activated and CD Text is to be written: On some systems the system crashes when writing the Lead-in.
The reasons for this are faulty IDE Busmaster drivers. To write CD Text, an "unusual" block size (96 bytes per sector) is used. It would appear that many busmaster drivers are unable to cope with this.
We have now tried to include a few "tricks" to transfer the data to the driver in a "more digestible" fashion. Please let us know if this has improved writing CD Text. It could of course also mean that these tricks make writing CD text not work on other systems - in this case please also send us a message!
Just to clarify the situation again: This is/was not an error in Feurio! - It is an error in many IDE Busmaster drivers which were probably only tested by the manufacturer with "usual" data block sizes - and still contain errors which only occur with "unusual" block sizes.
If writing CD text with active busmaster drive operation does not work with this version either, we can only continue to advise you to deactivate busmaster operation and to urge the vendor to finally correct the driver.


Anyway, I wouldn't use programs like Nero to burn audio...

That's good info. Much appreciated.

You said you wouldn't use Nero for audio CDs. What do you recommend? I use either Nero or Stomp RecordNow Max 4.0 when making audio CDs. And they've both gotten the job done nicely.

After 2 years using Feurio I think it's unbeatable.
Maybe EAC can get close ripping and for accuracy (offsets can be set with accuracy of samples - the rest just accuracy of sector), but its burning engine is very "young"...

Nero has too many bugs: drives that fail writing CD-Text with Nero work perfectly with Feurio and CD-Text enabled.
Another one that you can experiment is that Nero usually "eats" the last sector of a WAV file. So, I wouldn't trust Nero for audio.

Maybe Feurio has less features than Nero (basically the Track Editor) but all that it has work perfectly. The burning engine is the best, and multiple burner work nicely.
I think RecordNow doesn't have track editor or at least Prassi PrimoCD (the original) didn't have it.

Feurio interface with its idea of projects is perfect for me. (Strange at first after working with Nero compilations, but much better in my opinion).
After some time working with Feurio you realise the programmer that made it is simply better than Nero's ones. For example, try importing a CDDB database for offline working (I don't have permanent conection): Feurio imports 110000 discs in 70 seconds. Nero in more than 10 minutes. (After that it lasts several hours making indexes - horrible)
And Feurio does it in a quarter of space...

And it all goes like that: much comfortable to insert titles by hand, the help is really helpful, a lot of information about the system, it warns about defective MP3s and error positions...

The problem could be to pay for an extra program. For the moment you can download a free totally unrestricted demo at www.feurio.com
It's only 2.3 MB and it doesn't install any kind of drivers or system libraries. It all goes in its folder and configurations in the registry: it can be used just by copying the folder to another machine, so it won't mess any other program or system...

Thanks again!

hehe Feurio doesn't even work for me!!! I load up Feurio Writer and load .cue file and when i click on write and it says insert empty cd, i'm using Princo cds and they are straight from the spindle and Nero says that the cd is blank. Feurio is whacked.

The only reason why i want to try Feurio is because apparently cd-text burnt cds work ok in Sony Discmans. CDRWIN & Nero cd text burnt cds dont work at all on my Sony Discman but Blindwrite does but no text comes up at all. >>=\