#1 Burning Software

Hi,

I'm using the StarBurn_CdvdBurnerGrabber_Lock() function to lock media in the drive (Pioneer A05). After it's called, pressing Eject has no effect as you would expect.

However, if I call any SDK function that accesses the media, such as StarBurn_CdvdBurnerGrabber_ProbeSupportedWriteModes() or StarBurn_CdvdBurnerGrabber_TestUnitReady(), the lock is unexpectedly removed and the media can be ejected.

FYI, calling StarBurn_CdvdBurnerGrabber_GetDeviceInformation() does correctly maintain the lock.

Is this a known issue and is there a workaround/fix?

Thanks.

Colin

Sounds like you're creating StarBurn device object, issuing some commands (lock in your case) and then destroying the object. In such a case device state would be restored (unlocked) during object destroy sequence. Would you please double check your code - do you have such a condition. If yes - just keep device objects persistent. If not - please report and we'll figure out what's wrong with StarBurn (possibly).

Thanks!

Hi Anton,

Welcome back, I hope you had fun in Cuba!

I just tried this again with exactly the same code (I was going to send it to you so wanted to double check first) and it's now working perfectly

Not sure what's going on there, but please assume theproblem is on my end and I'll write back if the problem resurfaces. Sorry about wasting your time there.

Cheers,

Colin

OK. I've got it. The problem only occurs with blank media. This is why I was unable to reproduce it again this morning.

If a blank disc (CD-R or DVD-R) is in the drive, the lock is lost as I described originally.

However, if the disc is recorded (tried with CD-R and DVD-RW) the lock is maintained.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Colin

1) A lot of fun! Rita-5 was just great!

2) Thanks for the detailed information. I would check what's wrong (is this a bug of feature?) today or tomorrow. Would keep you updated.

Just a gentle nudge to see if you have had any success in reproducing this. Please let me know if you need more information.

Cheers,

Colin

Not yet. Whole weekend was "timeout issue" struggling with a bug present in StarBurn from 2003. I'm done with fix and working on your issue right now.

Struggling with your question. Seems to be standard Windows behaviour Do you have any other software capable of locking media in drive? I want to compare the results with something you can also get hands over... Thanks!

I used to use K-PAR device drivers and these were able to lock the media in the drive. This was probably because it uses a kernel driver to manage the device, rather than the passthrough approach, so it had complete control over the loaded disc.

I'll investigate some more myself and get back to you. We need to ensure the media is locked when loaded so I'll see if I can find a pattern to all this!

OK, I'll create a list of software I use to check lock drive capabilities and would share test results with you. Strange thing so far - seems to be no additional SCSI traffic with drive locking (or not locking) the media...

I've looked into this some more today, but not much more to report - probably only what you already know.

If I use the StarBurn SDK to lock a blank disc, it locks as you'd expect. I first reported that issuing one of your commands released the lock, but even issuing a DOS "dir" command on the drive letter will cause the lock to be removed.

So as you said, it's not your API that's at fault, Windows is issuing the command (though you also said it appears that no command is being issued!).

I've disabled all the system services that could be interfering, but it didn't make any difference, the lock was still being removed.

Is there anything else you can suggest trying, or have we reached the end on this one?

Thanks,

Colin

Please drop me a message and I'll send you SCSI bus analyzer (2 week key). So we'll check the SCSI traffic on your machine.

Yes, Starburn now support secret API to talk to SCSI device (via SCSI filter driver). We can hide ALL traffic and totally remove device from the system. However extra components from third party company would be required so I'd really love to find out the correct way w/o using this approarch.

Did you try other software (except StarBurn) BTW?

Thanks for the offer of the SCSI anaylzer, but I imagine you've taken a look and found nothing helpful from the output.

I tried VSO's SDK with the same test (i.e. insert blank disc, issue lock, dir.exe, lock gets removed) and its behaviour is the same as StarBurn's.

Is there anything else we can do? I can keep issuing locks from our application periodically, but it's not a good fix - there's always that window where the drive will be unsecured.

Damn it

I think own SCSI filter is the only way...

I posted this question on cdfreaks.com forum and had an interesting answer back. A chap called Truman tried it on a couple of drives and didn't see this problem, for him the drive remained locked. Please see http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=152599.

My drive here is a Pioneer A05, but I've just tried it on a Matshita 9585 but that displayed the same failure.

Do you have access to any other drives there that you could try it against? I can't see how the drive type would make a difference, all drives take the same lock/unlock commands.....