BluRay Drive Causing Lockup

NickM · 4 Jan 2011 at 08:41

I'm running W7 x64.

Since installing my new BluRay drive my computer has started having freeze ups whenever I open iTunes. Most programs just go grey and unresponsive 1 by 1 and I have to do a hard reboot. From what I can tell its just iTunes that triggers it.

Any ideas why?

theheyes · 4 Jan 2011 at 16:53

The short answer is that iTunes for Windows is complete and utter garbage. It crashes for me daily doing the most basic things and it's not my computer. So you're not alone in that respect.

Are there any firmware updates for your bluray player?

Memphis · 4 Jan 2011 at 17:09

theheyes said:
The short answer is that iTunes for Windows is complete and utter garbage. It crashes for me daily doing the most basic things and it's not my computer.

I've used iTunes for years. I have never had a single problem with it across multiple rigs.

I would suggest any problems you have experienced were down to your OS build.

NickM · 4 Jan 2011 at 17:51

First thing I did was update the drives firmware

NathanE · 4 Jan 2011 at 18:14

Is the drive plugged into a decent SATA controller? Intel, Marvel, Nvidia, AMD... should be fine.

If it's plugged into a JMicron controller (which are often value-add chips on Asus/Gigabyte etc retail boards), there is your problem right there. Don't do that

In fact, remove the chip from the motherboard using a soldering iron and then do this to it:

NickM · 4 Jan 2011 at 18:34

Apparently I have an Intel RAID controller and a JMicron JMB36X controller (according to device manager), the drive is just plugged into a SATA port on the motherboard. I updated both of their firmware to the latest versions yesterday. JMicron are no good you say?

Would disabling the JMicron in device manager help? Would disabling it cause a problem with my raid1 array?

NathanE · 4 Jan 2011 at 18:38

Just make sure it's not plugged into the JMicron and that'll rule it out sufficiently. The JMicron ports are usually different colours and often there are only 2 ports. The Intel ports will be greater in numbers (often 6 ports). So just make sure its plugged into the colour of port which has the most.

NickM · 4 Jan 2011 at 20:26

Its plugged in to the same row of 6 blue sata ports as my hard drives. I cant see any other sata ports on the board and from what the boot screens show the JMicron is just responsible for my IDE DVDRW drive and the Intel is responsible for the 6 sata ports.
I did previously have another DVD drive connected by IDE so maybe its got confused by me removing it and replacing it with a sata BD drive

.

theheyes · 4 Jan 2011 at 20:37

Memphis said:
I've used iTunes for years. I have never had a single problem with it across multiple rigs.

I would suggest any problems you have experienced were down to your OS build.

To be fair, I've used iTunes for a long time too - and it's version 10.x that's been bad. Previous versions have never crashed this much. And it's still buggy on a fresh install of Windows.