HP 7200i CDwriter problem

Factual Questions
1

I am at my wits end and ready to go postal about this…

Almost two years ago I purchased an HP 7200i CDwriter for $350. Every attempt to get it going has resulted in countless wasted hours and frustration. Instead of returning it the next day, which is what I should have done, I thought I’d try again some other time. In two years I have made like 3 serious attempts but got nowhere except having to spend even more hours restoring everything to the way it was because the installation software hijacks half the computer.

Anyway, I made another attempt this weekend with the same result. The drive works OK as a read only CDrom drive but when I attempt to record it gives an error message and stops working altogether until I reboot. All I get is cryptic error messages.

I visited the HP web site and pretty much all they have to offer is to charge me $25 for a phone call (which may or may not achieve anything). I called the CompUSA where I purchased the drive and they said that after two years they cannot help me unless I want to pay to have it installed by them.

While I understand it’s been two years, the fact is I paid $350 for a darned thing that never worked, the installation is lousy, the documentation is probably among the worst I have seen… Today I could probably buy it for less than half what I paid. I don’t understand why these people (both CompUSA and HP) cannot let me talk to someone who is knowledgeable for a few minutes.

I am really ticked about this because I just wasted another weekend trying to get this going. So, here’s my question:

What can I do? Anyone have a similar CD writer? Anyone have any ideas?

2

You might try the firmware update, available here.

What software are you using to try to record? You might try Nero . Try not even installing the CD Creator software.

3

I’m running an 8100i drive from HP. JonF is right, get the firmware upgrade and be sure to upgrade all of your Adaptec software to the latest possible revision you can run. Be especially sure that in your hardware device settings that DMA is not selected for the CD-R/W drive. (Go to Control Panel, select “System”, go to the device tab and right-click on your 7200 drive.)

Hope this helps!

BTW: Try e-mailing HP tech support. It’s free and they’re usually good at responding in a reasonable amount of time.

4

In addition to other suggestions re updating Adaptec version and drive firmware.

1: Make sure Adaptec recorder “CD recorder properties” under “tools” setting is set correctly and has ID’d your drive properly.

2: I generally set DMA to “on” for both hard drive and CDRW
although this may cause problems on older systems.

3: Try to make sure CDRW drive is on the second IDE channel and is not sharing the primary IDE channel with the boot “C” drive. Set as CDRW as “master” on second IDE channel if there is another CD ROM on that channel and set other drive as “slave”.

4: Make sure there is at least a gig of slack space for temp file while burning.

5: Make sure that nothing else is multi-tasking while burning.

6: Turn off any virus programs while burning.

5

Well, are you sure its a writer? It should say so on the front.

6

Well, I had pretty much tried everything mentioned and it still wouldn’t write. I decided to open it up and clean the laser lens just in case this might be the problem. I opened it up ever so carefully and it did seem like the laser lens had a tad of dirt which I cleaned with a Q tip.

I put it together again and now it will not even read!! It tries to read once and when it cannot read it shuts down and won’t even let me open the caddy to get to the CDROM.

Oh well. I better take it in for repair… or maybe buy a new one since this one is old already. I think I’ll make sure the new one is not HP.

7

\

The HP model # he gave is a burner

8

IMO not worth repairing as cost to service would be better put towards new faster unit and repaired CDRW units (in my experience) have a bad track record of staying fixed. New Plextor 12X is a very nice unit. I have the 8X and have had no complaints.

Try http://www.onsale.com or http://www.necxdirect.com.

9

sailor,

While I’m sorry to hear of your plight, I cannot let this slide.

  1. Included in that price you mention is a margin buffer to allow for customer returns. The fact that you did not take advantage of HP’s return policy is certainly not something you can hold against them.

  2. When a company sells products in the volume that HP deals in, support specialist seem to be few and far between. Their time is extremely valuable to their employer. When a product is still under warranty, the purchase price of your product also pays for support resources. Again, HP cannot be held accountable if you allowed your warranty to lapse before taking action to solve your problem.

I understand that you are frustrated, but, please do not direct your anger at the undeserving.

10

This being a free country I can direct my anger anywhere I please for any or for no reason :slight_smile:

Gripe #1: when I tried to install the software, it installed a bunch of stuff I did not want and took over a bunch of file associations. It installed an older version of Acrobat over a newer one. Just for this HP should have a very special place in hell. It took me some hours to get the computer back to where it was initially.

Gripe #2: The documentation is probably among the worst I have ever seen. It calls the same program by different names (It took me a while to figure out Easy CD is the same thing as CD Creator) and a lot of the time it just does not mention what program does what. It took me several hours to realize the drive was not working, rather than thinking it was my ignorance of the software.

HP can deny me any support and I will understand it but I will also take my business where I can get better service. When I bought a Kodak USB cam I got excellent help, well beyond what I expected.

One reason it has been two years is that every time I try to install the darned thing, I spend ten or fifteen hours on it and when I try to get any help from CompUSA or HP I just get long automated menus and waiting on hold.

The fact is I got nothing for my money. Yes, I admit I should have just returned it while it was in warranty. I already said that. But I didn’t and I was hoping there might still be a chance I could get it to work. I guess I should just accept that I paid a few hundred bucks for a piece of worthless crap.

11

Although your experience with this drive is less than satisfactory, HP sells some of the most stable drives out there, and would be a good bet for a new drive. If you give them another chance, you will probably be pleased.

If you still prefer not to use HP drives, I can respect that based on your experience. My recommendation would be Yamaha. Their drives are known for their stable and reliable performance. I have been VERY happy with my Yamaha for two years. The software was enough to do the job and no more, which I like. I am not even using their software anyhow. I use CDRWIN for most of my burning.

12

Well, when you’ve got 2,000 reps supporting 10 products for 5 customers . . .

:wink:

13

I drove 36 miles RT to the compUSA store and asked to talk to a manager. I got a young man and I told him my story telling him I realized they did not owe me anything but I would be grateful if he could do anything like give me some credit or something. He was very simpathetic and said “let me see what I can do” and went off. (I guess he wasn’t really the manager with any capacity to decide. After a while he came back with a bitchy “manageress”. She addressed me like I was trying to pull a fast one. “Hey, look at the date! It’s from October 1998!” She really pissed me off. Not only by not offering anything but also her attitude.

I went over to the service counter and asked how much it would cost me to have the drive tested and they said they would not test it like that. I have to bring my own computer.

I was steaming by the time I left the store and I am not the type who loses his temper easily but I was on the edge. I would have got great pleasure in smashing the drive on the floor in front of everybody and yelling a few words but I knew the incident would end up very unpleasantly.

When I walked in I was ready to buy a new CD writer if they would give me some credit for the old one and I would have been very happy. As it worked out I was pissed and I will make it a matter of principle to never buy from CompUSA or HP again.

They really expected me to say “Oh well, never mind, I’ll just plunk down another $300 for another CD writer and hope I have better luck this time.”

While I realize they do not owe me anything, they also have discretion to do something for me. It is clear I paid $350 and got nothing in return but crap and a lot of aggravation.

In any case, I am NOT going to spend another $300 now to buy another drive. If anyone has any ideas as to how I might get this drive to work or how I might get something for it, I would appreciate it. I have tried pretty much everything, including software upgrades etc. I think the drive was probably bad in the first place and probably by now is really messed up.

BTW WTF happened to “plug and play”? What a joke!

And yes, say what you want about Kodak. I bought a USB cam for less than one third of what I paid for the CD writer. The camera would not work at first and, even though it seemed like a computer problem and not a camera problem, the guys at Kodak were very helpful and left me with a very pleasant impression. It turned out to be a computer problem which is why I would not buy Quantex again. Their customer service sucks. You can be sure I’d buy Kodak again. At HP OTOH you can’t even talk to a live person.

Well, i’ll just wait to see if anyone can give me some idea as to how I might get something out of this heap of crap I got here with HP label on it.

14

I called HP and they wanted to charge me $25 to diagnose it and if it was a hardware problem they said it could not be repaired as it is obsolete. They do not even have a customeer service dept as such. Lousy service.

Anyway, after talking to several people, I got one who said he’d try to help me diagnose it if I wanted. By this time I was so aggravated he had to talk me into trying. Well, we fiddled with some files and the register. The way I understand it the main thing changed is the controller driver:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\hdc\0002 (and 0003)

Changed from IDEATAPI something or other to “ESDI_506.pdr”
If someone can explain what this does, I’d like to know.

Anyway, the CD writer now seems to be working (although I have not done a thorough test yet). This is hardly plug and play!

I have noticed in the Device Manager the hard disk description has changed and any changes with C: make me nervous. It used to be WDC AC34300L and now it is just Generic IDE Disk 47. Can someone explain the implications and if I can get it back to what it was?

15

Been there - done that… and did it again. You’re probably finished re the drive. If it wasn’t completely zonked before your adventure with the q-tip, it’s probably completely out of alignment now. I saw this not to chastise but as a charter member of the “Oh my God what have I done now!” club.

It’s time to move on.

16

Astro, we simulposted and you missed my last post. Surprisingly (at least to me) the CD writer is now in fine working order and I just tested it by recording my first CDrom.

What I didn’t think was to make notes if all the changes I made (mainly some files renamed and some changes to the register). I’ll have to find out so I can do it next time I reinstall Windows.

Maybe someone knowledgeable can explain it to me.

17

IIRC, “Easy CD” is not quite the same thing as “CD Creator”. EZ CD allows for direct copies from a CD drive whereas CD Creator gives you a layout to add files to for burning.

Not trying to be picky, just trying to prevent frustration when you can’t find the option to copy a CD easily in CD Creator (as I had).

18

I’m not claiming to be “knowlegable” especially after you said you had tried all the other suff to no avail and I was telling you to flush Polly down the toilet and “move on” but here’s what (I think) happened.

Your system is old enough that apparently whoever set it up was using the old Intel IDE drivers which IIRC I have not seen around on newer systems since WIN 98 stabilized the Microsoft IDE drivers about 2 1/2 - 3 years ago. The Intel drivers were written to maximize ATA/EIDE transfer performance for the (then) latest Intel IDE controller chipset using DMA and some other enhancements the chipset incorporated, that the generic MS drivers did not take full advantage of. They were primarly used on Win 95 systems.

This driver had the nice side effect of being able to identify the drive model and the not so nice side effect of being incompatible with several non-hard drive peripherals (apparently your CDRW drive is included in this list)

What the tech had you do was change the driver to the generic built in Windows driver via a registry hack. BTW what version of Windows are you running anyway? I think most of the respondents to your problem description have been assuming you’re using Win 98 or 98SE.
Anyway good luck with your old, slow (but working!) drive.

19

OOPS, yes, I forgot to mention I am using WIN95 OSR2 on this particular system.

Astro, what you tell me is very interesting and I will make a note of it. I believe the drivers I had are the ones that WIN95 installed and I am guessing the newer ones are the win98 version. OK, so they are compatible with the CD writer but I wonder why they took away the capacity to identify drives. I am also wondering if the new drivers may be slower for HD transfer since you say the old ones were optimized for this particular chipset.

I have two hard disks on the primary channel and two CD ROM drives on the secondary. He made me update the drivers for both channels… I wonder if I could have left the old driver for the primary channel (hard disk) and update only the secondary channel. Well, I am not going to mess with it for now but I’d like to know.

20

Well, I am utterly confused by this now. But let’s see…
Yes, it seems there are two programs with similar names:

the command to copy a complete CD is
“C:\Program Files\Easy CD Creator\Creatr32.exe” /Automation /cdcopier

while the command line for Creator is:
“C:\Program Files\Easy CD Creator\Creatr32.exe”

So it seems to me it is the same program with a couple of switches. then there is some other software:

To copy complete CDs:
“C:\Program Files\CD-Writer Plus\Easy-CD Audio\ECDAudio.exe” /Automation /cdcopier

To make audio CDs:
“C:\Program Files\CD-Writer Plus\Easy-CD Audio\ECDAudio.exe”

To print inserts and labels:
“C:\Program Files\CD-Writer Plus\Easy-CD Audio\ECDAudio.exe” /JEWEL
And yet another program to make data CDs:
“C:\Program Files\CD-Writer Plus\DirectCD\directcd.exe”

And I have learnt to NOT install HP Trax which is a PITA.

As you can see I am still trying to figure all this out. The documentation is really not good. After analyzing the above I have a strong suspicion that ECDAudio.exe is a HP version of Creator. They look pretty much the same. I just wonder why they gave me both with the drive. Am I confused or what!