If you are using any flavor of Vista, you may notice that the Read/Write may be slower than what you would normally expect from your system. In Microsoft’s knowledge base article # KB 942869 they describe the problem as:

Symptom

loadTOCNode (1, ’symptoms’); On a Windows Vista-based computer, you finish recording an optical disc, such as a CD-R, a CD-RW, a DVD-R, or a DVD-RW disc. To record the optical disc, you use the DVD-R/RW drive, and you select the mastered disc format. Then, you notice that the read speed of the drive is much slower than the expected speed. This slow read speed causes the Windows Vista operating system to take more time to copy files from the drive.

Note If you use a built-in DVD drive, you must restart the operating system, or you must resume from hibernation, to reset to the default speed of the DVD drive. If you use an external DVD drive, you only have to restart the external DVD drive.

When the system is writing the disc, the drive uses a slow speed. However, some drives do not automatically set the drive speed back to the default speed after the system finishes writing the disc, and the system ejects the disc. Therefore, poor performance occurs when the system reads the disc again.

You can obtain the Microsoft Hotfix from here. Note: There is no link to download the hotfix from the site. You must request a download from Microsoft itself.

Which brings up another question. Why on hotfixes does Microsoft require sending in a request? Is the hotfix of questionable value that they need to monitor who gets it? Your thoughts are appreciated.

Comments welcome.

Tags: microsoft, hotfix, dvd problem, speed, download