NEC DVD-RW ND-3550A Not reading DVD?

Hi all!

I have this NEC drive the ND-3550A. To keep it short, I burnt two DVDs at work, brought them home and my new NEC drive is only able to read one of them. The other, it cant seem to read. When I try to access the drive, it appears to just be empty.

I took that burnt DVD and placed it into my other system with a regular DVD drive and it read the data inside it fine.

Anybody have any idea the problem? I flashed the fireware from 1.05 to 1.06. Still no luck.

Thank you for any input!

Hello, I also wanted to contribute my own information. I also have the NEC ND-3550A, and am having similar problems with "Call of Juarez" and "Battlefield 2142". I've updated the firmware on the 3550A to 1.07 with no result, although I'm going to attempt it again now that I've found a jumper I can place in the drive. It plays DVDs, and most DVD-ROMs, burnt discs, CDs and has even done so despite the absence of a jumper designating it as the master drive. I've only recently been having a problem with DVD-ROMs, and only a select few at that.

This has really been a frustrating issue for me. Google has gleaned little relevant information, and what I can find is unresolved (like this particular thread). Anyone have any ideas?

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 2.4 ghz Dual Core
ASUS AN32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
Windows XP Home SP2
4 GB OCZ PC3200 SDRAM
PNY GeForce 8800 GTS SLI
HT Omega Claro soundcard
650 watt BFG power supply

utaka95,.. Can you tell us a little more about what the Starforce software does to the system. Sounds like it modify's the REgistry so the device won't work on some kink od DVD's. I have the same problem but it did not happen until recently. I worked for more that a year. I Rip a lot of movies and then burn them for a backup. Almost all of them have some form of copy protection but DVDDefabDecrypter can also unlock them. I have looked on dozen of help web sites and there must be over 100 people that have this same problem. It basically renders the NEC 3550A unusable. I also have a LiteOn DVD+RW drive and so far it has not been affected. It is possible that this bug can be transferred from a DVD to another DVD player. My Sony DVD player is now having the same problem. Put in a disk that was burned on a PC and it won't see it,.. or it breaks up very bad.

Hope you can provide some additional direction. you mention re-installing Win XP,... Are you thinking this will restore some specific device driver, or wipe out any problem in the registry???

Hello there, before I start... I replied to this thread as it may help other people with a similar problem find the solution as it is similar to the last post.

I have an NEC ND-3550A and I’m having problems copying films.

I'm trying to back up my film collection and some of them will copy and burn to a blank disk, but others; a message comes up from DVD2One saying “Will not copy from protected Disk” Despite running AnyDVD.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s down to the region as I tested one of those said disks in my friend’s Pioneer drive and they copied without a single problem using the exact same software I’m using. Knowing this I tried changing the region on AnyDVD and it didn’t have any effect.

I’m an advocate of the “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” so I haven’t upgraded the firmware because I’ve never felt the need to do so. Would this solve the problem or is there a way I can make this drive full multi region without having to fork out for a new DVD burner?

Thanks in advance

Thanks for replying, although the "burning time" is a complete myth...it's all dependant on the quality of the components to how long they last. Plus, I've seen hundreds of refurbished computers with their original CD/CDR Drives that have been used constantly and still work.

Anyway, to answer your question, it's not that old and hasn't burned that many DVDs or CDs It just doesn't copy some DVDs which is really annoying.

SO I went out an purchased a Pioneer Drive.

My NEC drive still refuses to read some DVDs. All I use that for now is burning because I like the feature that it has, that detects the quality of the blank disks.

Funny huh, won't read a dvd but it will burn it once it has been coppied *lol*

I advise anyone who has this problem to get a Pioneer, they are much better at reading disks. I picked up a cheap second hand one for £20.00 out of CEX...BARGIN!!!

I still haven't binned my NEC drive though, as I said...it makes a good burner, but a crap reader. I hope NEC are looking at this and actually improve their product

You have to download latest aspi drivers and forece [b]aspi18[/b]

I've just started to have the issue w/ my 3550a. It was working beautifully and could read DVDs from Asia or burned DVDs with no problem. I sparsely use the drive for burning so its not that.

It will read a "authentic" movie DVD with no problem, but it seems other type of DVDs are having issues whereas it didn't before.

I suspect what others have mentioned...a software patch or registry change occurred. Did anyone ever find out how to fix this?