LIGHTNING UK!

Nope, 1.03 is the latest for the 118L.

That setting does nothing unless hardware defect management is actually active - which it won't be on a BD-R unless you manually format it. The program logs if it is or not when you start a burn... take a look.

Try burning at the other supported write speeds - 10x and 16x. If that doesn't work you could try cleaning the drive with a cleaning disc or buying some better media - Taiyo Yuden make the best CDs, I wouldn't use anything else.

It's the 'Eject Tray After...' -> 'Write' that you need to enable. The Verify one is for when you're in standalone Verify mode and makes no difference to a Verify that happens after/as part of a Write operation. These are program settings though and nothing to do with a Build project - hence they aren't stored in a project file.

Without (thoroughly) testing an ASMedia card myself, it's hard to say if the way it never errors out will cause a problem. There are times when certain error codes are required for correct functionality and I just don't know at this point how well the program will still work if it doesn't get them.

I guess it could be possible... by all means, go back through all the various versions and give them a try. I don't think ASUS would have bothered to mention not to attach ATAPI devices to it though if that was the case. Looking at the log, I see no reason why you couldn't already be in Write mode when inserting the disc. Just insert it, wait the normal 10-30 seconds for the drive to finish initialising it, then press F5 to force ImgBurn to refresh the device. That'll ignore the fact the drive was already reported to be ready and attempt to read the disc from scratch. The reason it's not automatic is because there's no difference in the response from the drive between it being empty or not empty.

Was that log created without having a disc in the drive (at all) ? There isn't a single command failing! So basically, the drives can't EVER not be 'ready'. You really shouldn't be using that card/chipset for an optical drive. It's assuming things that might well always be true of a HDD or SSD, but are certainly not true of an ODD.

If I look in the manual for a motherboard that has an ASMedia 1061 chipset on it (ASUS P8H61-M came up in a search for 'ASMedia 1061 ATAPI), there's a note by the info for that chipset/its ports saying ATAPI devices aren't supported. The same is mentioned in the Z77 and X79 board manuals. So that's probably why you're having problems.

You don't need to worry about testing with discs - actually, it's better if you don't. What you're aiming for is having that 'test unit ready' commands error out like mine did and report there's no media present - tray open/closed. Get that working properly and the rest will be fine too. I'm interest to see for myself just how messed up these asmedia chipset cards are, so I ordered one off ebay. It ships from HK though so it'll take a week or so to get here

Ok so how about if you press F5 whilst it's sitting there in write mode with drive reporting itself as being 'ready' when it isn't? That'll cause the program to release the drive handle and recreate it. Once you've tested that a few times, if it's still not making any difference, try the whole thing again after changing the SPTI enumeration method in the settings (on the I/O tab) to something else. Device Interface is the best one but I'm curious to know if the others work.

If you leave the log scrolling like that and just eject/load the tray (with no disc in it) a few times, does it still never change its response to be more like mine? i.e. with the SENSE stuff and 'Not Ready' What driver version do you have installed? 1.3.1.0 ?

Sorry, I've no idea. If 'test unit ready' isn't erroring out when there's no disc in the drive, something is wrong with the system. The program can only work with what's being reported. If other programs rely on a response to something else (or on the OS's auto insert notifications) then that's down to them... ImgBurn doesn't I'm afraid.

The program asks the drive to write at the speed you've selected and then queries the drive to find out what speed it's burning at. As I see no 'Write Speed Miscompare' warnings in your log, the drive accepted the 6x write speed request and reported it was going to burn at 6x. If it then doesn't do that, it's probably a firmware bug or it changed its mind due to something that happened as it started to burn the media.

If you open the program without a disc in the drive, switch to Write mode and press F8, it shouldn't be logging that exact info. If it is, your drive is claiming it's ready - and obviously it can't be. What you should be seeing is some 'SENSE' lines too - meaning the 'TEST UNIT READY' command failed. i.e. You must have I/O debug mode enabled before you insert the disc and leave it enabled until after the disc info box on the right gets populated. If there's no change in the response to the 'TEST UNIT READY' command between there being no disc in the drive and there being a disc in the drive, it's totally out of my hands. Put your drive on a controller that actually works properly.

I assume that log was captured when there wasn't a problem and the disc was picked up ok? I need to see a log where it DOESN'T work.

So if you load the program and put it into write mode... AND THEN insert a blank disc, it says it's not empty? It looks as if the commands are failing to be processed properly (by your drive/drivers) to me. Do as mentioned above and load the program + put it into write mode, but then press the F8 key to enable I/O debug mode (it'll say it has been activated in the Log window) before inserting your blank disc. Once it has come up saying what you pasted earlier... i.e. ...please F8 again (to disable I/O debug mode) and save the log (via Files -> Save in the Log window). Then attach the log to a reply here in the forum (use the 'More Reply Options' button). Thanks

Right and so when does that message come up? The second you start the program? Do you even see the splashscreen? Try booting into safe mode and see if it runs then. If it does, it's caused by something running in the background on your machine - antivirus software or something maybe.

The disc info from the box on the right when you're in write mode will tell us why ImgBurn thinks the disc is empty/not empty. Please copy + paste it.

If you've tried redownloading, why aren't you using the current release?

Can you forward me such an email please? If the link is right in the email, it must be your email program or browser that's messing up the ? and causing it not to work.

Yes, it's bad. You need to use the proper MKM-003-00 or MKM-001-00 Verbatim stuff.

What are you doing on your machine that means it takes over 2 minutes to read 512MB from the source drive?! I'm afraid this is YOUR problem and not something I can fix.

Was that the exact email link? It's missing the question mark after index.php!

Try again having enabled 'Force Hypertuning' and 'Overspeed' in the EEPROM settings (Advanced Settings within ImgBurn) and set the Write Speed to 4x.

Ok so the other 2 are probably on a 3rd party chipset via a PCIe link of some description. If you want to test burning to all 5 burners from memory, use discovery mode and burn (with 'Test Mode' enabled so as to not waste anything) to 5 DVD-R discs. At least then you'll see if the machine can handle the 5 burners at once without any sort of ssd/hdd bottleneck.