I have a LTR 52246S CD-RW, lite on 52x24x52 cd-rw. It will burn CDs a decent rate, though I doubt that it is full speed. When I try and read a CD-R, it either goes very very slow, or it stops responding. I can't install any games at all with it, nor can I copy data from a CD-R onto the hard drive. When I first got this drive about a year ago, it worked fine, but then I believe one day it just started doing this crap, but I can't say when. I recently reformatted my pc and I still have the problem. Im using Nero 6, and the cd-rw is the only cd drive in my pc at the moment, and it is set at cable select and it is master. I have my old 24x cd rom drive on with it, and the 24x works fine, but the liteon still sux. I have tried all the jumper combinations for the 2 combined and still no go. Using windows XP, DMA is on, and i have configured the read and write speeds to 52x through the nero tools. Any suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated.

By the way, when its trying to read a disc, it seems to start spinning the disc for about 2 seconds, then it stops, and does this repeatedly.

Go to the liteonit site and download the Smartburn utility, which will tell you what speed you can burn at.

Also, make sure you aren't speed limiting it through Nero or through the media.

The smartburn utility just gives me the write speed which is 52x, so I guess it is burning at full speed, it just takes it a couple minutes to start up, with that repeated stopping and starting spinning the CD. It said nothign to me about my read speed. The nero info tool says my drive has 52x read speed, but it is definitely not going at that so it is probably the maximum it can go at. downloaded smartburn v3.15.

If that's the case, use the Nero Toolkit which includes utilities like CD speed.

That will give you the info you require.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, make sure the correct write speed is selected in Nero.

Start Nero Burning Rom, and go to the burn tab and make sure the write speed is 52x.

My write speed is fine, its the read speed that is very slow.

Have you used CD speed like I suggested or not?

sorry i forgot to post the results to cd speed, it reads at 2.77x, then slowly goes down.It goes so slow that after about a half hour i just closed it.

I have the exact same unit and on CDspeed, it averages 28.89 x on the Transfer taking 2.57 minutes. 650mb cd.


Is your firmware V6SOF??

If it writes okay, then it only leaves the unit's laser the likely culprit. If you had another unit and/or pc you could swap things over to make sure.

Cleaning the laser is worth a go, but probably won't do anything.

Luckily, burners aren't expensive anymore and you got a year out of it so better than nothing. :(

I'm not really good with CD-RWs, how can I check my firmware? Anyways I will probably end up just buying another cd-rw, or maybe I will take a peak inside. Is cleaning the laser hard? never opened a cd drive before. I will test out the cd drive in another pc maybe today.

ok i have two burners from that same model liteon 52246s, they were installed in two different computers (one is an msi with an athlon cpu and the other is pure intel breed pentium IV), the one that was installed in the msi board got to the problem about 3 months ago (no warranty) and i tried everything and by everything i mean clean laser, regrease laser rail, firmware upgrade and downgrade too, check any zif connection for misplace or bad ribbon cable and nothing works. Ok, now with the other burner, it got damaged yesterday, i was installing Age of mythology and it started with the same problem. I just put them aside and i'm going to sell them throug ebay for spare or electronic enthusiastic people (crazy or ignorant, je je).
I bought a 48106h (the one with dvd rom and 48 speed writer) an it's working flawless till now , have burned almost 100 cds to see if it got to the same error and nothing has happened, it works ok.
I guess liteon has some problem there because if you insert a pressed cd (i mean original) on the 52246s they seem to read ok at a good speed but if you try with a home-written cd they can even get to crash your PC.
So, final recomendation, buy another burner and throw away the other, i have kept them both to see if liteon comes out with some firmware solution.

If anybody comes out with a solution to this i would really appreciate, in the meantime, let's keep us away from liteon 52246s (i have owned them since they were on 12x and they are working today flawlessly so it's not liteon , it's the burner's model).

I had the same problem with a rebadged Buslink drive that was a Lite-On. I tried everything without success. I returned the drive and exchanged it for another rebadged Lite-On (BusLink) and it works fine. I guess the original drive was defective.

I had a similar problem with this drive, although not as bad as yours.
Additionally, it had problem with writing, from time to time.
In my case, problem with reading was with the master/slave on IDE bus.
I had one slave (liteon) and no master (not sure this is supposed to work).
After setting liteon to master, reading worked fine, but still not writing.
So I returned the drive, and I am still waiting for replacement.