Win7 support:

In message , Paul
writes:
[]
single-point-of-failure. If the power cable falls off,
of course the tray won't open on a desktop (motorized)
drive.

Paul

Or pop open on a laptop type - I think it's still a solenoid release.

I _have_ encountered ones where the eject _button_ is unreliable - but
right-clicking on the drive in Explorer and selecting eject should still
work.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

In my life I have written about six poems ... The rest of it is comedy that
happens to rhyme. - Pam Ayres, interviwed in RT 2018/3/17-23

On Wednesday, October 2, 2019 at 5:07:31 PM UTC-7, Paul wrote:
JT wrote:
Robert in CA wrote:

I have several drives I only paid $20 for, which
turned out OK.

I rely on the reviews, to identify the bad ones.

Paul
The DVD player and HD arrived today.I replaced the
old DVD player with the new and the 8500 had a little
trouble getting started because it tried to read the
optical disk but I finally got online. Then inserted
the disc that came with the new player and nothing
happened just like my old player.

I'm beginning to think it's something else that is
preventing the player from working because the new player
should work but its doing exactly what the old player did.

Thoughts/Suggestions?
Robert

Is that SATA port enabled in the BIOS?


JT


That's a good place to start.

The OP has two computers, and he could do an
optical drive swap on the working machine, in order
to do some read tests on the new optical drive.

When drives have two lasers, and one lase...



I actually didn't check the bios but
took your suggestion of testing different
media. I put in a CD and it played music fine
and then put in a DVD movie and again fine.

Then put in the disk that came with the player
and this is whats on it

https://postimg.cc/ctBkdtS5

then tried to run it

https://postimg.cc/tZ2DfQtL

but gave me this when I clicked firmware update
and didn't feel comfortable with clicking

That's a good place to start.

The OP has two computers, and he could do an
optical drive swap on the working machine, in order
to do some read tests on the new optical drive.

When drives have two lasers, and one laser fails,
then testing with CD media, then DVD media, helps
figure out if it's just one kind of media that
cannot be read. I might try a CD Audio, then
a DVD movie, and see if they're readable.

Whereas if all ability to read is lost at once, that
could just as easily be a missing driver, drive disabled
in Device Manager, a port that's disabled in the BIOS,
power connector fell off - any item that would be a
single-point-of-failure. If the power cable falls off,
of course the tray won't open on a desktop (motorized)
drive.

Paul

I didn't go into the Bios but I did take your suggestion
of trying different media. I first put in a CD with music,
then a DVD movie and both played fine.

Then I put in the disk that came with the player which wouldn't
open up before but this time it did. Here's what on the disk.

https://postimg.cc/ctBkdtS5

Then I tried to run it

https://postimg.cc/tZ2DfQtL

when I clicked firmware update it gave me this:

https://postimg.cc/8j0kG7zC

I decided not to click 'fix connection problems'
but it seems to run OK now. Whew!

I had to remove the front bezel to replace the player
and in doing so it gave me an opportunity to really
clean the inside front part since I've never had it
off before and took a little doing to get it just
right when putting it back together.

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
That's a good place to start.

The OP has two computers, and he could do an
optical drive swap on the working machine, in order
to do some read tests on the new optical drive.

When drives have two lasers, and one laser fails,
then testing with CD media, then DVD media, helps
figure out if it's just one kind of media that
cannot be read. I might try a CD Audio, then
a DVD movie, and see if they're readable.

Whereas if all ability to read is lost at once, that
could just as easily be a missing driver, drive disabled
in Device Manager, a port that's disabled in the BIOS,
power connector fell off - any item that would be a
single-point-of-failure. If the power cable falls off,
of course the tray won't open on a desktop (motorized)
drive.

Paul

I didn't go into the Bios but I did take your suggestion
of trying different media. I first put in a CD with music,
then a DVD movie and both played fine.

Then I put in the disk that came with the player which wouldn't
open up before but this time it did. Here's what on the disk.

https://postimg.cc/ctBkdtS5

Then I tried to run it

https://postimg.cc/tZ2DfQtL

when I clicked firmware update it gave me this:

https://postimg.cc/8j0kG7zC

I decided not to click 'fix connection problems'
but it seems to run OK now. Whew!

I had to remove the front bezel to replace the player
and in doing so it gave me an opportunity to really
clean the inside front part since I've never had it
off before and took a little doing to get it just
right when putting it back together.

Robert

The download page for the drive might be this one.

https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Data...HelpDesk_BIOS/

ASUS DRW-24B1ST Firmware v1.00
2014/03/18
1.54 MBytes

But that could well be the same version of firmware the drive
is already running.

As for the reviews on the Newegg site, it could be
that Asus has used more than one design with the same
part number. One reviewer suggested the Asus drive
was a rebranded Liteon. Which is a possibility.

Paul

The download page for the drive might be this one.

https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Data...HelpDesk_BIOS/

ASUS DRW-24B1ST Firmware v1.00
2014/03/18
1.54 MBytes

But that could well be the same version of firmware the drive
is already running.

As for the reviews on the Newegg site, it could be
that Asus has used more than one design with the same
part number. One reviewer suggested the Asus drive
was a rebranded Liteon. Which is a possibility.

Paul

I tried to download the driver:

https://postimg.cc/CzKF23my

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
The download page for the drive might be this one.

https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Data...HelpDesk_BIOS/

ASUS DRW-24B1ST Firmware v1.00
2014/03/18
1.54 MBytes

But that could well be the same version of firmware the drive
is already running.

As for the reviews on the Newegg site, it could be
that Asus has used more than one design with the same
part number. One reviewer suggested the Asus drive
was a rebranded Liteon. Which is a possibility.

Paul

I tried to download the driver:

https://postimg.cc/CzKF23my

Robert

That's the drive firmware.

The CD/DVD drive has a controller board, with a processor
on it. The "firmware" is code the CD/DVD drive runs, and
supports stuff like "how to write when asked".

An important part of the firmware is "media tags".

Ritek 4: Set laser to medium power, max speed 8x, run CAV or CLV etc

So, there is information that relates the kind of blanks
you're using, to "suggested settings".

Back when drive research was still ongoing (drive speed
change from 20x to 22x to 24x), the drives were released
to manufacturing in a hurry. Not all the media tags were
in the firmware table of the released firmware. The
drives were leaving the factory "half-finished".

Consequently, the advice back then, was to download the
firmware and update the drive with it. Then, the drive
would have more "recipes", and on average, you'd find more
media was burning "error-free".

I used to run tests, using samples of media from the
store. I would spend as much on blank media, as on the
drive itself, and would use a small number of discs
for test burns followed by "quality scans".

And the first firmware update, did make a difference.

*******

Now, the CD/DVD drives are mature. The firmware contains
all the media tags you're going to get, and no additional
firmware is required.

There are other reasons to acquire firmware. You can
set the drive to be "Region-Free". That's one hack.
A second hack is removing "Rip-Lock" from the drive
spindle speed. if you want to rip media as fast as
the drive will go, you don't want the drive to enter
"TV playback mode", where the spindle goes at ~1x speed.
I had a drive here, where it would read a burned DVD
very slowly, because it thought it was playing a movie
on a TV set, and that the spindle only needed to keep
up with TV playback speed. Using a firmware with Rip-lock
disabled, all the discs were treated like data discs and
read at a "good" speed (4x or 8x).

Since no newer firmware is available, I wouldn't panic.
Most of the goodness is boiled in right now.

If you had bought a CD/DVD/BluRay drive, there might
be more maintenance work to do on those. I don't have
one, so couldn't tell you what that's like.

The "driver" is already in the OS itself. The ATAPI
driver being an example. Unlike in MSDOS days, where
there seemed to be a lot of third-party cruft to
make optical drives work, the "driver" today is generic and
quite stable.

"Applications" on the other hand, are things like
Imgburn, and those vary in quality. Some have quirks,
while the others "just work".

Paul

The drive seems to work OK now.

Now that we have the DVD player resolved
we can get back to creating the Win 10 HD
for the 8500. So after changing HD's do I
just insert the DVD and follow instructions?

I remember we talked of customizing the HD
during this process and I seem to remember
we were going to set the C: partition at
around 80MB because we could also lower it
later. So how do I do this and customize the
HD?

Thanks,
Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
The drive seems to work OK now.

Now that we have the DVD player resolved
we can get back to creating the Win 10 HD
for the 8500. So after changing HD's do I
just insert the DVD and follow instructions?

I remember we talked of customizing the HD
during this process and I seem to remember
we were going to set the C: partition at
around 80MB because we could also lower it
later. So how do I do this and customize the
HD?

Thanks,
Robert


That's in the Customize menu.

https://www.tenforums.com/attachment...windows_10.jpg

There's a "New" option. There is also a "Delete" option
which allows deleting the default volume already on the
newly purchased drive. You delete the 2TB existing partition,
then "New" an 80GB partition. As for getting the partition(s)
in the right or best order... I don't know how to do that.

https://www.tenforums.com/attachment...windows_10.jpg

The whole procedure covers a great many options.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html

You want the "Offline Account" when setting up your account,
as this gives you control of the home directory name. Even though
the screens after this one pester you, make a local account. You
can do a Microsoft Account (MSA) later if you want.

https://www.tenforums.com/attachment...10-a-msa-1.jpg

Paul

The whole procedure covers a great many options.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html

You want the "Offline Account" when setting up your account,
as this gives you control of the home directory name. Even though
the screens after this one pester you, make a local account. You
can do a Microsoft Account (MSA) later if you want.

https://www.tenforums.com/attachment...10-a-msa-1.jpg

Paul


As you say, a great many options. If I
remember, since the 8500 has the license
key it shouldn't prompt for it, correct?

I'm getting confused with the legacy BIOS,
I want to put WIN10 on the C: partition?
correct? Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez this is getting
too technical for me to follow. I don't
remembering going through all of this when we
created the Win 10 HD for the 780.

Robert

It's still confusing after re-reading
but it seems that if we do nothing it
will create (4) partitions. It seems
to obtain legacy bios we need to delete
(as you suggested) and then place the
OS in a partition. Is that correct?

It sure seems different than the 780
Win10 installation. I don't remember
doing any of this.

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
It's still confusing after re-reading
but it seems that if we do nothing it
will create (4) partitions. It seems
to obtain legacy bios we need to delete
(as you suggested) and then place the
OS in a partition. Is that correct?

It sure seems different than the 780
Win10 installation. I don't remember
doing any of this.

Robert

Of course it's different.

The install on the 780 was done as "Win10-over-Win7".

It started with cloning of a disk with a copy of Windows 7.

The "pattern" was basically already on the disk,
so no thinking was involved.

1) Clone an existing Win7 disk to the new blank disk, using Macrium.
2) Boot Windows 7, with *only* the new disk drive
present in the machine.
3) Insert the Windows 10 DVD disc.
4) Run setup.exe off the Windows 10 DVD.
It installs over Windows 7, keeping your programs and data.

*******

I took you at your word, you wanted to just do a Clean
install and put Windows 10 on there, which benefits
from a little preparation work, as described in the
previous post.

Paul

On Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 9:17:25 PM UTC-7, Paul wrote:
Robert in CA wrote:
It's still confusing after re-reading
but it seems that if we do nothing it
will create (4) partitions. It seems
to obtain legacy bios we need to delete
(as you suggested) and then place the
OS in a partition. Is that correct?

It sure seems different than the 780
Win10 installation. I don't remember
doing any of this.

Robert

Of course it's different.

The install on the 780 was done as "Win10-over-Win7".

It started with cloning of a disk with a copy of Windows 7.

The "pattern" was basically already on the disk,
so no thinking was involved.

1) Clone an existing Win7 disk to the new blank disk, using Macrium.
2) Boot Windows 7, with *only* the new disk drive
present in the machine.
3) Insert the Windows 10 DVD disc.
4) Run setup.exe off the Windows 10 DVD.
It installs over Windows 7, keeping your programs and data.

*******




I don't think I have a Win7 Disk?

This is on my Patriot Key:

https://postimg.cc/hXM3bjJF

Windows 7 repair disk 10-17-13

https://postimg.cc/jLjrpGzr

Win 7 Pro Master

https://postimg.cc/CZ00Qd7c

Could I just use my present HD and clone the
blank spare via USB connection?

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:


I don't think I have a Win7 Disk?

This is on my Patriot Key:

https://postimg.cc/hXM3bjJF

Windows 7 repair disk 10-17-13

https://postimg.cc/jLjrpGzr

Win 7 Pro Master

https://postimg.cc/CZ00Qd7c

Could I just use my present HD and clone the
blank spare via USB connection?

Robert

If you have a copy of Windows 7 with your
"preferred setup", you could clone that over.

That would include a C: partition small enough
to suit your purposes. If the C: partition on
such a disk was 1.8TB in size, that would be
a little bit on the big side.

It's always possible to change partition
sizes in Macrium, when cloning over a disk,
so you can make changes. But Macrium is not
the "perfect" partition management tool, and while
you can achieve a desired effect with it, it
isn't always that simple to do it. You can drag
and drop partitions, resize the partitions one
at a time while doing so, and "build" a disk image.
And then you might have to boot repair it before
using it. As an example.

But if you're happy with one of your Windows disk setups
as is, you can always just clone that over and use it.

*******

Using Windows Disk Management, you can shrink a
100GB partition to 50GB. That's about it.

If you had 30GB of data on a 1.8TB partition, and
used Macrium to clone it, you can use the alignment/size
dialog when setting up the transfer, to reduce the size
of C: . You could shrink (in Macrium), the partition
down to around, say, 35GB. Macrium is not limited in
the same way as Disk Management is. During cloning, it
can move the metadata out of the way, that blocks
Disk Management from making larger changes than it makes.

Paul

On Saturday, October 5, 2019 at 12:21:36 AM UTC-7, Paul wrote:
Robert in CA wrote:


I don't think I have a Win7 Disk?

This is on my Patriot Key:

https://postimg.cc/hXM3bjJF

Windows 7 repair disk 10-17-13

https://postimg.cc/jLjrpGzr

Win 7 Pro Master

https://postimg.cc/CZ00Qd7c

Could I just use my present HD and clone the
blank spare via USB connection?

Robert

If you have a copy of Windows 7 with your
"preferred setup", you could clone that over.

That would include a C: partition small enough
to suit your purposes. If the C: partition on
such a disk was 1.8TB in size, that would be
a little bit on the big side.

It's always possible to change partition
sizes in Macrium, when cloning over a disk,
so you can make changes. But Macrium is not
the "perfect" partition management tool, and while
you can achieve a desired effect with it, it
isn't always that simple to do it. You can drag
and drop partitions, resize the partitions one
at a time while doing so, and "build" a disk image.
And then you might have to boot repair it before
using it. As an example.

But if you're happy with one of your Windows disk setups
as is, you can always just clone that over and use it.

*******

Using Windows Disk Management, you can shrink a
100GB partition to 50GB. That's about it.

If you had 30GB of data on a 1.8TB partition, and
used Macrium to clone it, you can use the alignment/size
dialog when setting up the transfer, to reduce the size
of C: . You could shrink (in Macrium), the partition
down to around, say, 35GB. Macrium is not limited in
the same way as Disk Management is. During cloning, it
can move the metadata out of the way, that blocks
Disk Management from making larger changes than it makes.

Paul



It's getting too confusing,..

I gave you pictures of images of all that
I had on disk and the flash drive which I
thought may be Win 7 but you didn't comment
on any of them or the possibility of using
my present HD to clone the blank HD. I believe
that is the way we did it before.

So if that's possible then lets just use my present
HD and paritions.

Robert

So can I use my present HD to create a clone
via USB?

Robert

In message ,
Robert in CA writes:
On Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 9:17:25 PM UTC-7, Paul wrote:
Robert in CA wrote:
It's still confusing after re-reading
but it seems that if we do nothing it
will create (4) partitions. It seems
to obtain legacy bios we need to delete
(as you suggested) and then place the
OS in a partition. Is that correct?

It sure seems different than the 780
Win10 installation. I don't remember
doing any of this.

Robert

Of course it's different.

The install on the 780 was done as "Win10-over-Win7".

It started with cloning of a disk with a copy of Windows 7.

The "pattern" was basically already on the disk,
so no thinking was involved.

1) Clone an existing Win7 disk to the new blank disk, using Macrium.
2) Boot Windows 7, with *only* the new disk drive
present in the machine.
3) Insert the Windows 10 DVD disc.
4) Run setup.exe off the Windows 10 DVD.
It installs over Windows 7, keeping your programs and data.

*******




I don't think I have a Win7 Disk?
[]
I'm a bit puzzled.

I've been following this thread from the sidelines (about 60 posts
marked as "keep" so far!), and my understanding is you have - or had -
two Windows 7 computers, which you were going to (or have) "up"grade to
Windows 10, having first made images (or clones) of their 7-ness, so you
could return them to 7 once you'd established the "digital entitlement"
to "up"grade them to 10 in the future.

As such, by far the easiest way to restore them to 7 is to use the image
or clone you'd made - not install 7 from scratch, which is what you'd
need a 7 disk for.

Or have you, during your various activities, lost the images (or clones)
you made?
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. -Abraham
Lincoln, 16th president of the U.S (1809-1865)