Hi there, sorry to hear they're so unhelpful. Their products have been very reliable for me so far, which is why I continue to use their equipment. There are some reports of dodgy DVDs (aka as pirates) which struggle with certain DVD players. This is also the case for (video) VCDs which are hit and miss with DVD players. I developed a new problem with my DVD drive. My Sony DRU530A was working with all media, but DVD's would stop playing on my TV player about 1/2way through, although they would play fine on the computer. (I did check the TV player with other DVD's I made previously on the Sony drive, no problem) "Now the drive won't detect any blank DVD media. So I gave this info to Sony and they said to run their diognostic and send them the test file." Have you returned the BIOS to the original settings? It's so hard to think of what it is other than a mechanical failure of the drive itself, in which case, replacement or warranty might be more hopeful as an alternative. Best of luck.

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More, Sony and First 4 do very little to help. http://www.betanews.com/article/Sony_to_Help_Remove_its_DRM_Rootkit/1130965475 KPACHbIЙ OKTIABR

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Thanks for the all responses. I thought as well that it is likely some kind of mechanical failure that might be the cause. In particular since the DVD's do in fact play all the way through on the Sony drive on which they were made.(some kind of tracking perhaps??) Anyway I finally gave up on Sony and will use the drive as a DVD rom and CD burner. Got a new Memorex dual layer, since the one on my wife's computer has worked flawlessly, I went with Memorex, and I no longer trust Sony. Thanks again.

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Here's your answer Rhawk - you can remove the spyware in the website given here. It's an abstract from a newspaper I was sent: -------------- Thursday, November 3, 2005 Sony to offer patch to reveal hidden copy-protection software ASSOCIATED PRESS in San Jose After a chorus of criticism, Sony's music division said it was distributing a free software patch to reveal hidden files that automatically installed to hard drives when some of its music CDs were played on personal computers. The offending technology was designed to thwart music piracy. Sony BMG Music Entertainment and its partner, British-based First 4 Internet, on Wednesday said they decided to offer the patch as a precaution, not because of any security vulnerability, which some critics had alleged. "What we decided to do is take extra precautionary steps to allay any fears," said Mathew Gilliat-Smith, First 4 Internet's chief executive. "There should be no concern here." The controversy started on Monday after Windows expert Mark Russinovich posted a blog report on how he found hidden files on his PC after playing a Van Zant CD. He also said it disabled his CD drive after he tried to manually remove it. Mr Russinovich made the discovery while running a program he had written for uncovering file-cloaking "RootKits". In this case, the Sony program hid the anti-piracy software from view. Similar technology also has been used by virus and worm writers to conceal their code. A firestorm quickly erupted over what appeared to be an attempt by the music company to retain control over its intellectual property by secretly installing hidden software on the PCs of unsuspecting customers. Making matters worse, Sony did not disclose exactly what it was doing in its license agreement, Mr Russinovich said. It only mentions that proprietary software to enable copy protection would be installed. The software affects only PCs running the Windows operating system. "The [license] makes no mention that it's going to install something that's going to be hidden from view, that will constantly consume CPU resources even if I'm not listening to music and it will have no uninstall capability," he said. Because the technology looks for a specific prefix in the filename, it also could be used by malware authors to mask their programs, Mr Russinovich said. There was also the question of how a PC user was supposed to maintain a system that ran hidden programs. "If you've got software on your computer that you can't see, there's no way for you to manage it from a security point of view," he said. "You don't know if you need updates for it. You don't know if you should uninstall it because you don't know it's even there." The copy protection technology, which limits how many times a CD can be copied, was included on about 20 titles, including discs from The Bad Plus and Vivian Green, among others. Mr Gilliat-Smith and Sony BMG spokesman John McKay said the technology had been on the market for about eight months and there had been no major complaints prior to Mr Russinovich's blog post. Still, a newer, similar technology was in the process of rolling out before the latest controversy erupted. The patches that reveal the hidden files are being made available to antivirus companies as well as customers who visit the Sony BMG site. They do not remove the copy protection software, however. Mr McKay said customers could download a program to safely uninstall all the software by visiting the Sony BMG website at http://cp.sonybmg.com. The controversy highlighted the need for rules as to what content providers can and cannot install on PCs to protect their property, said Mr Russinovich, who is co-founder and chief software architect at Winternals Software, which specialises in advanced systems software for Microsoft Windows. "We need to get some formality about what's legal, what's ethical and what's fair - and what level of disclosure there needs to be," he said. "It's fine for Sony to say we're not going to do that now. What kind of guarantee do we have they're not going to do it at a future date or that other companies are not going to do this?" ---------------

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