I have recently started having problems with my HP DVD writer dvd400i

It usually writes at 8x but lately it has slowed right down to less than 2x and can take upto an hour to burn a full 4.7GB disc, even reading a dvd can be slow with read speeds of 1.8x, the CD reading and writing seems ok. I;m just about to check if the firmware is upto date but other than that I can't think of what can be causing this. hopefully one of you ultra brain boxes can come up with something

hi spellbyte, sorry for the lack of response to this question.


I doubt this will be the problem, but it might be worth a look. In Device Manager, check the Secondary IDE Channel -> Advanced settings.
Make sure both 0 and 1 are set to DMA if Available.

If these are already set, your DVD burner is on it's way out (the DVD and CD use different lens - explaining why you can still burn fine with one, and not the other.

Marked as Answered.