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[LESTAT]

ok this is something i have thought about and even mentioned in long forgotten threads but ill try again, and knowledeable input is greatly appreciated.


using nero OR record now OR prassi,, ALL and i mean ALL burns complete successfully. **edit  they dont all burn 100% if the iso is bad then of course it will fail. i mean those disks that give dirty disk errors all burn 100% ok.

now commen sense and technically speaking,, if a DISK(dvd) was bad the burn would fail. there would be a point were the burn would fail because of bad media. but it doesnt. the burn completes and says its fine.

so then how, can the READ be bad if the BURN completed successfully.


or is it that the dvd is so "cheap" or "low grade" that the burn is actually casuing the damage.?

also,, some games will allow you to hit A and try to read the disk again (dynasty warriors 4) and it will fail to read again and again BUT BUT if you remove the disk and insert it again most of the time it will read the disk fine again. and continue on.(once you hit A again after it gives dirty disk error)

mostgames i get dirty disk errors dont allow that though,, they will just lock up at that scrren forcing you to reboot.

so , if the game is allowed to reread the disk and it reads ok,, then wouldnt it be a logical conclusion to say that the disk isnt the problem,, that possibly some where somehow the game is seeing its not a real dvd ?  i know thats a long shot but again how can it fail one time and read good another.


and the read errors are coming from my pc dvdrom i use on my xbox.
it works fine on my pc and never has failed me.

i havent tried my dvd burner on my xbox, just to test another dvd drive,, and i will sometime this weekend.

but overall wouldnt you agree that, if the media was bad, the burn would fail.
and if in fact the media was bad,, the game would not be able to reread the disk and read it ok.

now keep in mind im trying to keep this thread away from the thompson dvd issue,, i think we all know they are shit,, and unfortunately i have one on my box  its why i use the pc-dvd  that and it reads everything,

[LESTAT]

update-

i tried crimson skies again since its a nice big iso.
Record now 1x
set burn option to dvd (2048)

ok it burnt ok and i also used the Verify option and it verified ok.
(which by the way, other games that have dirty disk errors, the few that i have verified have actually FAILED the verify.)

ok so i load it up with mxm,  and right away even before the MS video i get a dirty disk error,, boy am i pissed.
ok so i reboot,, and launch it right after PBL loads,, get to the main menu ,, mind you i said I GOT TO THE MAIN MENU NO dirty disk error this time.

i choose my save and about 3 seconds into loading my save  i get a a dirty disk error.
so i try again ,,  this time i get the dirty disk before the ms screen.

ok so i try avalaunch,, and of course that thing dont even see the dvd.

i dont understand why so many apps dont see the dvd when i use the pc dvd.
but also remember that this happens when i use the xbox dvd,, the dirty disk error.

ok so...

is it ACTUALLY a bad burn .. no i dont think so.  if that were the case it would error out every time at the same place.
the 2 places that it does crash are prior to the ms video, (the same place the 4977 bios crashes) and when loading a save (the same place that D6 crashes the game from the hard drive, i think d6 did that)

any ways you look at it.. Record now verified the data and found NO errors, and yet the xbox seems to think the disk is bad.

so,, looking at it technically, i have to go with there is a fault or bug within the bios that is loaded from pbl,, and even mod chips too since they too get dirty disks,
too many people are having dirty disk errors when using legitimate dvd-r's  as many people who get these problems, then it would appear that most dvd-r disks out there are bound to be bad, which is not the case, out of a stack of 50 there is no way in hell that you should get more than 1 or 2 bad MAX. i have bought Maxell dvd-r's from wallmart before and out of 10 i THINK i have 5 that i kept because the others gave dirty diskj errors. now if i had kept them i may have been able to test them a little more for true surface or data corruption.


i now am going to try a UDF dvd with nero and see what happens,, but i doubt its going to make a difference.

it makes me mad as hell that out of a stack of 50 dvd-r's  i only have 5 i have kept,, 5 that will play from the xbox,., i have a nice stack of the rest that have BAD written on them with black marker.


i would be interested to get some feedback from anyone esle who may have done some research into this.

[LESTAT]

if the dirty disk theory going around is correct, that being bad media,, i just check,, the last 10 dvd-r's i burnt were bad..

another thought and this may possibly be more of a true solution is the dvd writer firmware.
if the dvd burner is not told how to handle things properly then of course its not going to burn things properly, and thus when it reads it,, it thinks everything is ok so it reports it as ok.
same goes for dvdroms,, if the firmware isnt up to date then of course it isnt going to read things properly.

has anyone found a way to update the firmware of the xbox dvd ?

[LESTAT]

well i decided to use dvd info pro and test the bad dvd-r's i have still laying around,, i have 2 so far that record now max recorded and verified as 100% that had errors on the disk when checking them with dvd info pro.
funny thing is those 2 disks had the errors on nearly identicle sectors.
now what are the chances of dvd disks having bad sectors on nearly identicle sectors.
and yet there is still no way to tell if this is bad data or a bad physical sector on the disk


is there any utilities that checks the actualy surface of the disk ?

[Mr Ed]

Ok, I read quickly though your lengthy posts, so willing to admit I may have missed something, but from everything you wrote, it sounds like a media problem to me.

What makes you think it isn't a media issue?

[LESTAT]

well what got me started in the first place was i was ,, sorry,, fucking pissed,, i bought a 50 pack of SUPPOSED maxell made dvd-r's and out of 20 i have only gotten 2 or 3 that are "good"
i mean thats roughly a 10% success rate or a 90% failure rate.
ive bought dvd-rs dvd-rw cd-r cd-rw and have NEVER seen this bad of a failure rate,, now i totally understand that this is possible,, anything can happen. but.. i find it VERY odd that the xbox gives me nothing but dirty disk errors for everything i burn.

right now im going thru 18 "BAD" disks and letting dvd info pro read the disks,, everyone has a multitude of White sectors - that that are bad once but a read retry aloows the sector to be read. and ALL of THOSE disks have a multitud of red sectors - sectors that filed to read even after several tries.

the white sectors are the ones i mentioned that if the game allowed you to hit A and try again it would read the disk and continue on.
the red ones, of course fail everytime.

but im digging deeper into this because both NERO and Record Now have both burned these dvd's and said the burn was successful and also that the verify was successful,, not all mind you there were some that said there were errors.
so,, either nero and record now are wrong and the disks are bad, or dvdinfo pro is wrong.

any way you look at it,, there is no way, right now to tell if the surface of the disk is bad -bad media  or if its just the data - bad burn or bad data files being burnt or bad iso.


im trying to find a dvd/cd surface scan utility that will actually scan the disk surface,, then i will know if the disk is the true problem. but i can not find any such utility. if you know of one ed, please let me know.

my dvd burner does not support media code so i can not see what media brand these are,, which is fucked up for a dvd burner the damn thing could at least tell you whqat kind of frigging disks it was chewing on.

there is also a firmware site that has shit loads of firmware for every drive imagineable but i cant find it,, something like firmware,com or something like that.. it has a really great forum too lots of info in it.

i just dont see how its possible to have a GOOD burn yet the reading is BAD,, i mean what kinda program burns a disk and tells its good and yet the disk is shit,,

[LESTAT]

just verified 5 disks

all crimson skies and 4 of the 5 lock at the exact same point when loading the game,, after you choose to create a player or load a saved player,, when the loading screen comes up,, it locks.. the other 1 locks before the ms screen comes up,, all have dirty disk errors.

the others so far are, topspin tiger 2004  true crime - which locks when loading almost all save games. almost all but not all.


now what makes me curious is that,, its VERY funny how i get dirty disk errors at roughly the exact same point that people say they have problems with the game locking.
mine play fine from the hard drie except CS ,, but isnt odd,, how people would say their game may lock at that point yet i get dirty disk errors from dvd-r.

and we already know that some games have been known to give dirty disk errors from the hard drive also.

[LESTAT]

ed maybe you can do a quik test for me,, grab a blank dvd-r if you have any ,,, feel it,, is there a slight film on the disk  like if you lightly wipe the disk on your shirt it feels somewhat tacky ?
i know that sounds really stupid, but all my dvd-r;s have some goofy film on them  maybe a protective film,, but ive never seen it before,, i always forget to clean them before i burn so i will clean the next one i burn,  i suppose that supposed film maybe interfering with the burn.

btw if you clean the disk  that film is gone. the are nice and slick and smooth

[Mr Ed]

Ok, so no film on my DVDs. They feel smooth and clean.

Also, I had an experience like you (although not with the film) but it was with a batch of Princos.  I had about a 90% failure rate.  I also have about a 10% failure rate on Riteks too.  Usually they would fail verification though, but on a few Princos, they passed verification, worked once in my XBOX and never again.

[LESTAT]

ok tried burning another game and got more errors. not just read once errors but 100% error.

ok so using dvdinfo pro i did an iso-> disk compare and the results were,, odd...


ed i might need your input or someone elses with knowledge..

ok here goes.

ever sector that read bad on the disk reads like this on the iso
LBA=12ECFF Byte=38912 thru 40959 ISO=0h DISK=(each byte offset was different)

so it appeard that the iso had all those byte offsets as 0h
but when they wer burnt, the disk had those offsets as data. or bad data and not 0h (thats a Zero not the letter 0)

ok so in my mind i see this.

the disk was recorded with the wrong offest or wrong blocksize.
meaning Record now is not recording the iso properly its reading the ISO structure wrong, thus causing the data to burn improperly, possibly.

i have record now set to record just as the tutorials say to.

DVD burning options are  Disk At Once (closed)
and Mode 1 (blocking 2048) - DVD
that IS correct yes ?

im just wondering if this isnt my burner, not doing what its suppose to.

i just downgraded the firmware so i dont think thats it.

its a Matshita DVD-RAM LF-D311. it does not support media brand codes so i cant tell who makes the dvd-r's but they are suppose to be maxell made.

it has burnt good dvd-r's using maxell dvd-r's from walmart so it could infact be the media i havent put that totally out of my head,, but damn every fucking dvd-r so far is bad, (i did a check of the ones that are supposedly good and they too have bad sectors), i got them off ebay and the bitch i got them from REFUSES to return my emails. funny she has hundreds of auctions too.

IMPORTANT NOTE
ever dvd so far locks at the EXACT same spot in games. i have 5 bad crimson skies dvd-'s and 4 of them ALL lock at the same point.
ii have 2 bad XGRA dvd-r's and they both lock at the same point.
i have 2 bad tiger woods 2004 dvd-r's and they lock at the same point.

i mean what are the chances that EVERY SINGLE dvd-r is bad at he exact same sector byte offfset.
and like i said before, if the dvd was actually bad, the burn would FAIL  correct? it would give a surface write error.

im still looking for a tool to do a surface scan of the dvd but havent found anything yet.

[LESTAT]

ok you replied while i was typing my next chapter in this horror story.


man im so pissed,, a 50 spindle of dvd-r's and every damn one is shit.  thats so fooked up..
i have not had one single good experience from ebay NOT ONE!.

screw it im sticking to a decent media wharehouse or something.

god why are dvd-'s so fucking expensive at retail stores,, god,, !@$#@#%^^@$^@#!%#@$#$
id go buy more of those maxells from walmart but shit,, i dont feel like paying 30 + dollars for 10.

[Large Dopant white]

Stupid question, but how do you make sure that you copied all the files correctly? Do you tranfer it onto the HDD?
I mean, if they're all failing at the same point, you may wanna make sure you didn't miss a file or something....

[Mr Ed]

Well first, I'd recomend Riteks if you want low cost but pretty reliable media via mail order.

Yes I still have a lot of those Princos left.  That was a painful experience.

Also, how are you making your ISOs?  Carxtion?  GDFImage?

[LESTAT]

yes ed craxion gdfi ,, also did ximage as a test and it didnt matter,, i also did a qwix iso too with now difference.

a quick file comparrison test is simply to extract the iso and do a properties and look at the size, and file and folder count ,, then do the same with the disk. it will report lower file size and or lower number of files/folders.


dvdinfo pro is a damn nice tool but disk verification just takes so dang long.


i wont even touch the subject of gdfi vs ximage as there is already a pinned discussion of that.

but ed dont you think the ISO->disk comparrison was pretty odd, that all those sectors in the iso were 0h but the disk was various bit sequences. ?

prassi has the "check postgaps and add if needed" option but record now dont,, i even tried prassi and it didnt make a difference.

i think i might run to wally world and see if i can pick up a cheap stack of maybe 10 dvd-r's.  if i can get off my duff today and do it. if they burn good,, then well  thats my answer.

[tng168]

just throwing out idea. could it be your burner?