PCV-RX403N Issues

[330clubsport]

Hi All

I have a Sony PCV-RX403N with the built in NetMD. I rebuilt the computer about a year ago and when I tried to create a MD it would fail at 95% with an error unable to transfer track. I had a spare drive I had purchased from eBay so I swapped it over and it worked fine so presumed it was the drive. A few weeks back my machine was hit by a virus (don't ask!!) and I had to rebuild it and, guess what, the issue recording minidiscs is back. I can't believe the second drive is now faulty and have upgraded Sonicstage to 4.3, downgraded to 1.5 and everything inbetween. Would anyone be able to advise if the NetMD would appear in Explorer (running Windows XP Home) and should it have a letter assigned to it in Sonicstage. It appears fine and recognises discs but will not write to them.

Many thanks in advance for any assistance to stop my sleepness nights!!!

James

[sfbp]

Check to see if your USB drivers contain an entry under NetMD where the driver file is NETMDUSB.SYS.

More later.

[330clubsport]

Hi Stephen

Many thanks for the reply. I'm not 100% sure where I should be looking (sorry for being so dense!). Under the drivers folder for NetMDDriver there is no NETMDUSB.SYS file. Would you be able to advise the location I should be checking.

Thanks

James

[sfbp]

I think you might need a download from this site called pa_driver.zip. However I am mildly surprised sony didnt provide you with something if this was an inbuilt drive.

Ah, I know - you reloaded Windows and some file they included originally wasnt there.

There are also instructions on this site for seeing unused drivers. It's a bit complicated so lets try the simple things first. You could try a search for that NETMDUSB.SYS file.

You might like to look here - I have no idea if this has MD drivers they gave you. Nowhere can I find mention of inbuilt NetMD.

[330clubsport]

Ok....I did a search on the hard drive and that file is there in three places! One in a temp folder for sonicstage 3.4 under my account directory, one under Program Files\Sony\Personal Audio Driver and one under Windows\system32\drivers which is probably the one you were talking about.

Also, I reloaded windows with the original Sony discs so all the customised drivers are installed. I can see the drive in Device Manager under Universal Serial Bus controllers listed as Sony Net MD and in properties it reports that the device is working properly.

What is bugging me and making me believe that this is the issue is that in explorer the driver doesn't appear. In sonicstage it appears and when I put in a disc previously recorded it appears and plays fine. It's only when I try and record to a minidisc I get the 95% then error message.

I dont' know if any of the above helps at all. Maybe it is a second faulty drive but it seems really odd that this has only happened after the rebuild.

Thanks!

[sfbp]

Sorry to tell you but possible the overwrite head has died. NetMD drives never show up in Explorer.

Can you write ANYTHING? eg can you "title" the disk?

Another thing to do is to find the post (search under user Avrin, for about 1 year back) about deleting the unused NetMD drivers. It's possible they are messing you up.

[330clubsport]

That was my take first of all and perhaps it is coincidence that two drives have failed and are exhibiting the same problem. It just seems very strange that it was working absolutely fine until I had to rebuild the computer. I will go through and strip everything out and disconnect the drive (not easy as it's internal) then reinstall from scratch the software as I have read others experiencing similar issues and it was software related. I am currently back to sonicstage 1.5.x and it is reporting the disc full which seems to be another "regular" error.

Many thanks for your time and help and I'll update if I find a solution or you will see a RX403N on eBay