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Problems With Magellan Mapsend-cdroms


arie1

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Hi there,

 

About a month ago I returned my Magellan Mapsend Directroute cd-roms to the shop. The problem was that after loading the cd's into the pc the pc produced after a while an awkward sound like it had turned into a sawmill. When I took the cd's out they both had circular scratches on them.

Because I have not experienced these problems with the hundreds of other cd's and dvd's that go into my computer I am of the opinion that the problem must be with the cd's. Maybe they are badly produced. The problem is that the vendor says they have tested the cd's on their computers without any problem and are therefor not obliged to give me new cd's. According to them it can't be ruled out that the problem lies with my cdrom-drive.

I told them that I will not accept that they just send me the old cd's back, but that they should take it up with Magellan then, if they don't want to return my money.

Now I am wondering, am I the only one with this problem? Is it likely that I have a faulty cd-drive and that the problem only arises with these two Magellan cd's?

For your information: the Mapsend Directroute software is the European version.

Thank you for your reply.

 

Regards,

 

Arjen Hulskemper :laughing:

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I haven't heard of this particular problem (the drive scratching the CD). Recent MapSend CDs do use a copy protection scheme that, while apparently quite effective in preventing duplication, have resulted in some incompatibility problems with certain drives. Those incompatibilities have been just in the form of not working as intended, though...not physical abuse.

 

Given the response from the vendor, I'd take it up with Magellan. I expect that they would let you exchange the CDs with them. They might try to squeeze a small fee out of you, maybe not. Seems to me if they won't let you copy the disks for everyday use, they should be generous in replacing damaged originals.

 

If you get a new set, you should do the full install on the hard drive and then apply the hack that gets around the prompt for placing the CD in the drive to operate it.

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Sometimes a CD Drive is so fast and the CD is just slightly off balance, the CD will start to do an exaggerated vibration in the drive when it is spun up. This was an early concern when CD Drives were approaching +25x. I've seen this happen several times. About the only "cure" I've seen is to find a way to load the CD onto a slower CD Drive. I have an 8x installed just for that purpose.

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I've also seen situations where the CD is not quite in the carriage completely and when the CD first spins up enough of it 'catches' to throw it out of whack just long enough (we're talking milliseconds here - if that long) for the CD to strike something in the drive and damage it. Dunno if that's the case here. Then there's always the possibility of a small bit of foreign material in the drive or on the CD that interfered with the CD operation.

 

I seriously doubt it was a problem with the CD except maybe something on it to throw it out of balance.

 

IF there is something wrong with the drive itself, it must be one of those dreaded intermittent problems since no other CD's have been affected. In that case you can either replace the drive to be safe or wait and see if it happens again.

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Well both cd's, the program-cd as well as the mapdata-cd, of the Mapsend software showed the same behaviour. I took them fresh out of the box and put them in the cd-drive. After the first time that the program-cd made the noise a was extra carefull that I put it in the right way the second time, thus not letting it stick out of the carriage. The same with the mapdata-cd, but this second disc showed the same behaviour. So, I am pretty convinced that the problem is not with my cd-drive.

Since the incident I have been using the drive on a regular basis playing game-cd's, movie-dvd's, music-cd's. No problem, no unusual sounds. No difference between original discs, recordables or rewritables. Weird huh?

 

Arjen

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I work on computer alot and have heard of this happening from hitting the eject button. sometimes a superfast cdrom drive will drop the cdrom on the drive tray before its completely stopped there by letting it spin in the carrage and getting it scratched. I haven't figure out what causes it, but I think its in the cdrom itself.

 

my option try another cdrom player or computer to verify the problem and I'm betting it goes away. or try using the eject command up the drive in "My computer" , they do the same thing but differently on how it slows the cd down to eject. the button on the front being the worst in cases like this.

 

 

just my 2 cents

 

flir67-------------

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Well, when the old cd's are returned to me and not swapped for new and undamaged cd's I will try an installment from another drive to test my hypothesis.

Concerning the suggestion of hitting the eject while the cd was still spinning and thus causing it to be scratched, I can only say that I hit the eject-button after hearing the high-pitched sound. Thinking about it, it could be that the high-pitched saw-mill sound and the scratching are two different things. That the scratching occurs only after hitting the eject-button like flir67 described.

Still, it is a coincidence that it only happened to the Mapsend cdroms. I often hit the eject-button while the disc is still spinning. Never had any problem.

Totemlake, it is not that I can't accept that my cdrom drive is at fault. I would be stupid to think and act like that and put cdrom's in it for which I paid 179 Euro's (more than 200 USD!!!). But I am not willing to pay extra costs for a new cdrom-drive if it functions perfectly well with ALL my other cd's and dvd's.

Anyway, if I get my old disks back I will test them in another drive. I'd rather have some new ones though, for maybe a small fee extra. I suppose these 179 Euro's are not the cost of the plastic.

 

Regards,

 

Arjen

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Totemlake, it is not that I can't accept that my cdrom drive is at fault. I would be stupid to think and act like that and put cdrom's in it for which I paid 179 Euro's (more than 200 USD!!!). But I am not willing to pay extra costs for a new cdrom-drive if it functions perfectly well with ALL my other cd's and dvd's.

 

I never suggested buying a new drive to test the theory. I suggested trying them on a different drive. That suggestion also backed up Flir67's advisement. This in turn would determine if your drive is indeed at fault.

 

With that said, IF I determined a drive was damaging my $200 software CD's, which would point to the likelihood others in turn would eventually be damaged, then I would be inclined to replace the drive. Just because it works well with other CDs right now, but has been determined to not do good with the others, doesn't mean squat in terms of doing the right thing to protect your existing software investment.

Edited by TotemLake
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My apologies, Totemlake, for taking it too far. We just want to know what the problem is, indeed.

I remember now that after the initial installment and producing some maps for the explorist and having the second cd, the mapdata cd, become mangled in the drive, I tried to run the program with the cd in my other drive. This gave no problem of scratching the cd, but the program wouldn't run without the cd in the drive from which it was initially installed. So I had the cd in this other drive, a dvd-burner, only for a short while, maybe to short for a diagnosis. I was so frustrated with having my brandnew and expensive cd's scratched that I didn't bother with reinstalling the program from the other drive. I just sent the cd's back. I was, and am still, thinking that the scratches might obscure relevant mapdata. So it would be wise anyway to get some new disks.

I am aware now that it is possible that my problem has two sides. One is that there might be some imperfections or imbalance in the cd's. The other is that my cd-drive is having problems with keeping these imperfect cd's in balance. Maybe because it is not such an expensive one. I can't find a brandname in the system-hardware information.

I hope now that Magellan will come with the suggestion to swap the cd's for maybe a little extra.

 

Regards,

 

Arjen

Edited by arie1
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:D Today I received new Mapsend Directroute cdroms. I installed from another drive and so far it works fine. I am not going to test the cd's in the drive in which the Magellan disks crashed last time.

It took some time to get the disks replaced, but that's the fault of the vendor I think. They, initially, wanted to sent them back to me without replacement. I suppose when they were sent to Magellan, they were just being swapped for new ones without further questions. Or am I too optimistic about the swiftness of Magellan's response?

Anyway, my compliments to the service of Magellan.

 

Regards,

 

Arjen

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