DVD prob; CDRW prob; Graphics prob

[Good Companion]

I spent my New Year's at a buddy's house trying to unkook his computer. He's got several things going on, and I think I know the problem on a few. However, I need some help:

Asus CUV4X-E or EA
P3 1G CPU
384 MB RAM (unknown brand)
Winfast Geforce2 MX 32 MB AGP graphics card
Toshiba DVD
4x2x24 CDRW
WinMe (ugh!)

My buddy has the following problems:
1. His DVD doesn't work at all;
2. His CDRW freezes when it gets to finalizing a burned CD
3. When he plays a game, the graphics "freeze" for a split second several times mid game at random times.

Here's what I think is going on:

1. DVD: I tried to open the tray to this and couldn't. It appears in Device Mgr, and does not have any question marks, exclamation points, etc. I don't think it's getting power. I'll open the box to find out.

2. CDRW: This has me stumped. All I can think to do is update Easy CD v. 5 with the latest patch.

3. Graphics: In his bios, the graphics were listed as PCI. I changed it to AGP, but this did not correct the problem. I can't think of what else to do other than update the Nvidia driver. (It's not clear to me what version dvr he's got.)

I also went up on the Asus website and found a bios update, which does not seem to address any of these issues. I'm reluctant to flash the bios unless I know it will fix one of these problems out of fear I will kill the bios.

Any thoughts?

Dana

[elroy]

Re: CDRW
many of these old burners [2x and 4x] have issues due to buffer under run errors. Often times caused by [1] lack of sufficient memory in the burner [2] lack of "smart burning technology" [3] the pc running other processes while the cd is being burned
Try a combination of the following things:
disable screen saver
using "task box" shut down everything but explorer and systray
disable anti virus software
put the data to be burned in a seperate partition and defrag prior to burning
don't try and do anything else while it is burning
re-boot the pc prior to burning

[goldenbuddha]

Is this off a fresh installation of Windows? Amazing what a fresh install of windows (getting rid of ME at the same time) can do ....

[Good Companion]

elroy: I'll try that.

goldenbuddha: It's not a fresh install. In fact, it's probably full of junk. If I have to, I'll format and reinstall. I just wanted to see if there was a simple solution before I resort to that.

Thanks!

Dana

[thekemp]

ME is such a problematic o/s its unreal many a time i have recomended clients to either change to 2000 or xp or downgrade to 98. there are so many problems with ME i have spend countless hours fixing it!