ASUS BW-16D1HT freezing/pausing

[sacdman]

This is a new drive which I successfully flashed. It will read 4K discs no problem. Trouble is, it is randomly freezing or pausing when watching a movie. Are these drives modified mostly for ripping? I really prefer just watching it and not having to rip it to watch it.

I have micro-fiber cloths and have cleaned my Touch of Evil 4k several times. It is still freezing and pausing. I have not been able to play the disc all the way through. I inspected the disc as much as possible to make sure it was as clean as possible.

I am wondering if there is something else causing this issue? It is just a cheap drive? Is there some process in my Windows 10 that could be getting in the way? This disc plays for anywhere from say 10 minutes to an hour and then fetches up. I am really at my wits end and ready to give up on playing 4K discs on my PC. Any help is really appreciated. Thanks.

Signed, "tearing my hair out"
sacdman

[Billycar11]

I'm guessing you flashed Asus 3.10?

I would try WH16NS60 1.02/1.00 as that won't have the sleep bug

[sacdman]

Thanks for the response. I did try the WH16NS60 1.02 and it is still freezing. I also do not have the 1.00 version. Not able to find it. Is it possible the sleep bug effects the drive while you are watching a movie? I thought that only happened when the drive was idle for more than two minutes? Your help is appreciated and I am still at my wits end trying to solve this. I also had this problem with the same drive which I had before. That is why I bought a new one, thinking there must be somethine else wrong with the drive. Thanks again.

[sacdman]

And yes, I did flash the 3.10.

[pneumatic]

I also had this problem with the same drive which I had before. That is why I bought a new one, thinking there must be somethine else wrong with the drive.

Was your previous drive a different model? Because if so, then maybe its not the drive's fault?

Maybe try moving it to a different SATA port, and try a different SATA cable as well. Might as well swap to a different SATA power cable/port while you're at it. Maybe check SATA settings in the motherboard BIOS. Or you could try using a 3.5" SATA to USB dock to eliminate any possible SATA related issues. Then I would try it on a different OS, and then finally a different power supply unit. Basically just do a process of elimination, but maybe you have tried most of this already.

edit: another possibility is cleaning the laser lens with isopropyl alcohol and a cotton tip. The case looks very similar to my ASUS DVD drive and that pops open easily by the tabs but the drive door needs to be ejected first for it to come off.

[sacdman]

With the older drive, I recently cleaned that with a cotton swab and alcohol. I just let it air dry. I have not tried cleaning the laser on this new one. Cleaning it on the older one did not make any difference. I just don't understand why this keeps happening and it does not happen at the same points in the movie. It happens completely randomly. I also turned off the firewalls I have and the antivirus and the problem persists. I also have swapped out the SATA cable. I did not try another sata port on the motherboard yet. I am wondering if there may be something in windows getting in the way, but task manager and performance doesn't seem to indicate any programs getting in the way. What motherboard settings would I be looking for? Also, what do you mean by SATA related issues? Your help is always appreciated. Thanks.

[dcoke22]

I think what pneumatic is suggesting is that it is possible one of the cables that connects your optical drive to your motherboard might be a bit dodgy or perhaps the port itself. It isn't very likely that's the case, but not impossible. If you have extra cables lying around, it is fairly easy to test. I do recall at least one person here on this forum in the last couple of years eventually finding a bum SATA cable as the source of their problems.

As for SATA issues, in ye olde days™, things on SATA would run in IDE emulation mode as opposed to AHCI (IDE is what there was before there was SATA.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA#Features I don't think Windows XP even supported AHCI. On modern Windows on modern hardware, none of this should be an issue, unless you've got a weird, old driver lurking in your system.

I know your preference is to just watch the discs, not rip them. I think the ripping path is much more widely used (and therefore tested) than the watch-discs-directly path. Storage is cheap. It is relatively easy to rip this stuff once and be done with it.

[sacdman]

I did try swapping the ports on my 2 BD drives, but this didn't help. Again, it froze and I was wondering if you want more details about my system or if you have any other suggestions?

[Toscaclarinet]

Hi sacdman I have the same drive as you with the same FW. I get these random freezes and disc locking up while watching films using a variety of players on my PC, although not on all discs. It is particularly around the 40 min, 1h 20, and 1h 40 marks, which tend to be where the layer crossovers are depending on the size of discs. This particular drive seems to struggle with these crossovers, and will sometimes lock up entirely. Other films will just have occasional random freezes for a few seconds and then resume, even if the disc is spotless. I have noticed particular studios are more affected, such as Sony discs. Trying the same disc out on my BU40N and Pioneer 211-EBK will result in no read errors watching films.

It is definitely not just a PC issue. I have had this drive through two builds now, the second one very high spec.

It seems this particular drive simply struggles reading some discs due to the way they are manufactured, particularly around layer changes. My solution was to buy an alternative player and make a note on which discs will not play through to the end on the ASUS, and simply use the other player for those ones.

[sacdman]

Thanks for the details Toscaclarinet. I figured as much. I may look into getting a different drive later, like the ones you mentioned and thanks. I am done troubleshooting and thank you all for your time. I appreciate it.

[sacdman]

I am actually ripping my movies now and turning them into ISO files. The Asus may be a little flaky on playback but it has no issues ripping so far that I can see. Thanks guys!

[Toscaclarinet]

Glad I could be of help. If the ASUS struggles to rip without errors (rare but has happened to me), slow down the read speed in MakeMkV. That fixed all but one disc I own that I ripped due to playback errors (before acquiring additional drives), but unless you happen to have the German UHD of Mockingjay Part 1 you should be good.