Pioneer BDR-S13U-X (fw 1.03) Randomly Hangs PC When Burning Discs

[pendell]

This isn't directly related to MakeMKV, but rather the optical drive itself, as this issue only crops up when I'm burning discs with tools like ImgBurn. Essentially what happens is, when the disc is done burning (DVD or BD, I haven't burned many CDs), when it does the "Cycle Tray before Verify" step, a good 50% of the time, instead of progressing normally, the drive gets locked in some sort of null state, where it never reports the disc being re-inserted. It hangs in such a way that any software that dares try to interact with the optical drive hangs or crashes. Only way to close ImgBurn in this state is through Task Manager, and if I try to open the drive in File Explorer, it crashes the entire explorer.exe process and the start menu disappears for a few minutes. Swapping out the disc with another or leaving the drive empty does not change the situation. The only fix is a full reboot - but even that gets interrupted - whether I Restart or Shut Down, the PC gets to the stage where it's no longer displaying anything and the monitor goes to sleep, but the PC continues to hang and never fully shuts down/reboots until I force it to with the restart or power buttons. If I take no direct action, the computer will simply never turn off, because the optical drive is preventing it from doing so.

For context, this issue was present on Windows 10 and still on Windows 11, my machine has an Asus PRIME B350-M motherboard, Ryzen 7 5700X CPU, 16GB of RAM, and an RTX 3060 (though the issue was also present when I ran an ancient GTX 980). I did also used to have AnyDVD HD installed and currently have XReveal installed, though I never let these programs auto-run and the issue still happens on a fresh boot where XReveal has never been opened. I'm not sure if this is an issue with the motherboard - I keep the BIOS up to date and it's never fixed the problem - or the drive itself - I'm never upgrading the firmware if that's the only thing that would fix this bug, because it's a holy grail drive one of the last that came stock from the factory with the LibreDrive-compatible 1.03 firmware. It works great for ripping all manner of discs, and when it does burn and verify the results are consistent and very good, but this is a pretty major annoyance, and I was wondering if anyone else had dealt with it or knew of any fixes.

[MartyMcNuts]

This isn't directly related to MakeMKV, but rather the optical drive itself, as this issue only crops up when I'm burning discs with tools like ImgBurn. Essentially what happens is, when the disc is done burning (DVD or BD, I haven't burned many CDs), when it does the "Cycle Tray before Verify" step, a good 50% of the time, instead of progressing normally, the drive gets locked in some sort of null state, where it never reports the disc being re-inserted. It hangs in such a way that any software that dares try to interact with the optical drive hangs or crashes. Only way to close ImgBurn in this state is through Task Manager, and if I try to open the drive in File Explorer, it crashes the entire explorer.exe process and the start menu disappears for a few minutes. Swapping out the disc with another or leaving the drive empty does not change the situation. The only fix is a full reboot - but even that gets interrupted - whether I Restart or Shut Down, the PC gets to the stage where it's no longer displaying anything and the monitor goes to sleep, but the PC continues to hang and never fully shuts down/reboots until I force it to with the restart or power buttons. If I take no direct action, the computer will simply never turn off, because the optical drive is preventing it from doing so.

For context, this issue was present on Windows 10 and still on Windows 11, my machine has an Asus PRIME B350-M motherboard, Ryzen 7 5700X CPU, 16GB of RAM, and an RTX 3060 (though the issue was also present when I ran an ancient GTX 980). I did also used to have AnyDVD HD installed and currently have XReveal installed, though I never let these programs auto-run and the issue still happens on a fresh boot where XReveal has never been opened. I'm not sure if this is an issue with the motherboard - I keep the BIOS up to date and it's never fixed the problem - or the drive itself - I'm never upgrading the firmware if that's the only thing that would fix this bug, because it's a holy grail drive one of the last that came stock from the factory with the LibreDrive-compatible 1.03 firmware. It works great for ripping all manner of discs, and when it does burn and verify the results are consistent and very good, but this is a pretty major annoyance, and I was wondering if anyone else had dealt with it or knew of any fixes.

I've used ImgBurn for years and never heard of "Cycle Tray before Verify". Can't you just turn that off?

[pendell]

I've used ImgBurn for years and never heard of "Cycle Tray before Verify". Can't you just turn that off?

You've never heard of that? It's enabled by default and highly recommended. It's the thing where after burning a disc, the tray ejects and then closes again before it verifies the disc you just burned. I could turn it off if I didn't care about verifying my burns, but I do.

[MartyMcNuts]

I've used ImgBurn for years and never heard of "Cycle Tray before Verify". Can't you just turn that off?

You've never heard of that? It's enabled by default and highly recommended. It's the thing where after burning a disc, the tray ejects and then closes again before it verifies the disc you just burned. I could turn it off if I didn't care about verifying my burns, but I do.

I have never verified a disc write. Not that I've written to a disc at all in the past 15 years.

[Shwalamazula]

I have been getting that the last year or so with my S13U. I thought the issue was the SATA to USB interface, because when I unplugged the USB from the computer, the system would recover and the drive would go back to normal. I did a system rebuild and put the Pioneer in the tower. I still get the hangs but now I have to manually power-cycle the computer to recover because the hang even stalls a reboot.

I generally see it happen when I'm doing a rip overnight and come back to it the next day (or longer).

I'm not sure what's up with it, but I know I'm gonna put it back in the USB enclosure because at least that will allow me to recover without pulling power. Looks like my Buffalo is getting promoted to tower princess.

[Billycar11]

I have been getting that the last year or so with my S13U. I thought the issue was the SATA to USB interface, because when I unplugged the USB from the computer, the system would recover and the drive would go back to normal. I did a system rebuild and put the Pioneer in the tower. I still get the hangs but now I have to manually power-cycle the computer to recover because the hang even stalls a reboot.

I generally see it happen when I'm doing a rip overnight and come back to it the next day (or longer).

I'm not sure what's up with it, but I know I'm gonna put it back in the USB enclosure because at least that will allow me to recover without pulling power. Looks like my Buffalo is getting promoted to tower princess.

you guys can now update your fw safely and see if that fixes the bug as i have published the pioneer downgrade fw
see guide for that.
so you can go back to old fw now freely on pioneer drives to just like lg

[Coopervid]

I have read similar things years ago and they were related to the SATA interface of AMD CPUs or boards. If you have additional SATA ports that are handled by an additional chip, try to connct the drive to them. Vice versa there were issues with these additional SATA ports. So try either ones.

You didn't tell use which discs you are burning. If those are multi-layer discs (>25GB) the issue is most likely that those are bad at the layer break and verify hangs there. Report back. There is a remedy for layer break issues and movies but not for data discs.

[kingpinRPh]

I had the same thing happen to me when burning discs using ImgBurn. It would only happen only with a Pioneer drive. The burning process would hang during the disc verification process “Cycle Tray before Verify”. What fixed the problem for me was changing the ImgBurn I/O settings. In the settings menu, go to the I/O tab and change the Interface from SPTI – Microsoft to ElbyCDIO – Elaborate Bytes. My computer is almost identical to your setup. I did not have to change the firmware on the Pioneer drive.