On 28 Jul 2005 at 19:08, Eric Dannewitz wrote: > David W. Fenton wrote: > > >Well, for one, DVD drive support on Windows, especially WinXP, is > >decidedly problematic. It's not provided by the OS natively, but by > >add-in software. > > > >WinXP, in particular, has similar problems with CD-R/RW drives, ones > >which are inherent in the OS, and not correctable. > > > >Optical drives with WinXP are very problematic. > > What? I've had a couple of different drives in different Windows XP > machines, and they all worked fine. I can't think of any drives I've > bought at local stores which have been "very problematic".
As long as you leave the machines with the OEM-provided drivers and support, things are generally OK. But that excludes and add-on DVD drive. > Seriously. Where do you get your information? . . . >From experience working with clients' WinXP computers and with problems with DVD drives after "downgrading" to Win2K. > . . . Name me one brand one > can buy at Best Buy, Frys, Office Depot, that does not work with > Windows XP. Or is "decidedly problematic". All of them are, because of basic problems in WinXP's communications with optical drives. > Hell, I have a Dual Processor Pentium III (upgraded from a dual > Pentium II) from 1997 that is running Windows XP, and has had a couple > of different drives in it. Currently it has a hand me down Pioneer 104 > DVD drive in it. It hasn't been problematic in the least. I'm very happy for you. This has not been my experience with more PCs than you happen to own personally. Dell support, for one, admits that they can't fix the problems because they are inherent in WinXP. That's one of the reasons one of my clients decided to "downgrade" to Win2K. The only thing they miss about WinXP is the faster boot time and the nice fast user switching. Everything else is substantially more reliable in the configuration they need to be running. And we've never been able to get their DVD drive to work again, despite installing the Win2K drivers for it supplied by Dell. If you want to get into the specifics of the optical drive problems, I can dig up some posts I've made in other forums that list a half dozen Microsoft Knowledge Base articles referring to various manifestations of the underlying problem. But the fact is that functionality that existed with optical drives in other versions of Windows is not well-supported under WinXP. And don't get me started on the problems that can occur if you leave a CD- R with an unclosed write session in the CD-R/RW drive and reboot. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
