Prevent Piracy by using Self Destructing DVD

German DVD-D Germany Ltd. has created a DVD disc that becomes unreadable after 48 hours. This limited time DVDs are already on the market in some countries.

The DVD-D movie discs come in sealed cardboard sleeves. Only when you open the sleeve the time starts to count down(no explosion). If you leave the DVD-D disc inside the sleeve you can keep it even for years.On average, users get 48 hours of use from a €3.99 ($6.44) disc, while planned premium discs will offer longer viewing periods for a higher price.

It is some chemical process that starts when the disc is exposed to air outside the cardboard sleeve protection(Most of the part is kept secret).DVD-D discs are of course ideal for movie and video game rental services.

Visit the web site DVD-d for more information.

DVD/CD Drive disappeared suddenly from Windows Vista

I heard from many people that their DVD/CD drive have disappeared from My Computer.I started getting lots of queries last month on this.So here the tech solution to get back the CD/DVD drive in Windows Vista.

Create a file fixcd.txt and add these line to it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

;Fixes issues with cdrom drives not working properly

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}]
"UpperFilters"=-
"LowerFilters"=-

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}]
"UpperFilters"=-
"LowerFilters"=-

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}]
"UpperFilters"=-
"LowerFilters"=-



Then rename it to fixcd.reg and execute it by double-clicking.Restart and watch for the DVD/CD drive magically reappear.

Mod your CDRom to read DVD

now i know most computers come with a dvd player but For ppl with old computers

WARNING!...

DO IT ON YOUR OWN RISK... You should be a expert in hardware modding

There are two types of CD-ROM drives we can mod:

24x to 40x
40x or higher

Drives slower than 24x are too old to be modded.

24x to 40x CD ROMs

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Laser Head Adjustments:

The track pitch of CDs is 1.6 microns, and the track pitch of DVDs is only 0.8 microns. The minimum length of track pits of CDs is 0.843mm, and the minimum length of track pits of DVDs is 0.293mm. That's why DVD discs can store much more data in the size of a CD.
Pinpointing this situation, we need to adjust the laser head so it can read discs with smaller track pitchs and shorter track pits. Open up the CD-ROM drive, do you see a lens on the rail? That's the laser head. On the side of the laser head, there's a screw you can adjust.

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This is the key of this mod.

This screw can adjust the size of the laser beam that lands on the disc. Referring to the above, after adjusting, the laser beam should be less than 0.293mm, to suit the needs of DVD discs. So turn that screw 2-3 times. I got this number through trial and error. Mark with a pencil, in case you forget how many times you turned that screw.
Speed adjustments:
DVD-ROM drives can play DVD movies smoothly at 4x speed. If we're modding a 32x CD-ROM drive, the rotation speed is obviously too high, increasing heat, and shortening the life of the drive.
So we need to decrease the speed of it.
Most people know that power supplies can provide 5V (red wire) and 12V (yellow wire) electricity output for Molex connectors. Find the Molex connector you'll plug into the modded CD-ROM drive, cut the yellow wire or insulate it with tape, so only 5V of electricity is transferred to the CD-ROM drive. The speed of the drive is now 32 * 5/17 = 9.41x and can now fulfill our requirements.

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40x or higher CD ROMs

When 40x CD-ROM drives are released, most manufacturers are already producing DVD-ROM drives. To lower cost, they use the same core as DVD-ROM drives with DVD functions disabled. What we need to do here is to re-enable the DVD function.
Open up the CD-ROM, behind the circuit board, look for a jumper that says DVD JUMP. Find a jumper to connect this jumper. Thin metal wire also works fine.
OK, so the DVD function is unlocked, but we still need to decrease the speed. Use the instructions above on how to decrase the speed of the drive.

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Notes:

Modded drives cannot be detected in POST, that means you cannot use it in DOS. But once you get into Windows, the drive works fine.
Modded drives have no region code problems.
Modded drives MIGHT NOT read DVD9 discs, that's why I said you can watch most retail DVDs in the beginning

Access Mac HFS+ Volumes in Windows

Windows does not (and probably never will) natively support HFS+, so the partition doesn't show up at all when booted to Windows XP. MacDrive is probably one of the prettiest and most well-integrated solutions, but $40 to $50 is the price tag.

I searched around a bit, and I eventually found a solution that fits the bill rather well. Erik Larsson's HFSExplorer [alternate link] is a freeware Java app designed to let you browse the contents of any HFS+ drives and partitions installed in your system. In addition to viewing the contents of said partitions, you can even extract files to any Windows-writable disk.

Enable CD burning for Limited accounts?

Allow limited users access to CD Burning:
This tip does not apply to Nero users; it is only for XP's built-in CD burning feature.
To allow Limited User's to burn CD's, click Start, Run and enter REGEDIT. Go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Look in the right pane for AllocateDASD and double click the entry. Set the value to 2.

On PRO, this is exposed in Local Security Policy under Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options

"Devices: Allowed to format and eject removable media"

For XP Pro, you can do this by clicking Start, Run and entering SECPOL.MSC

Go to Local Policies, Security Options, look in the right pane for Devices: Allowed to Format and eject removable media. Set this option to Administrators and Interactive Users

Burn a BIN without a CUE using NERO

You've downloaded a *.BIN file, but there was no *.CUE file associated and you still want to burn the *.BIN file using Nero

Your options are:

1) Create yourself a *.CUE

2) Convert the *.BIN to an *.ISO

3) OR use Nero to burn without the *.CUE file!!!

Yes, that's possible... just follow these steps and you will be sorted. No need for *.CUE files anymore

Ok, here we go...

1) Start Nero

2) File -> Burn Image

3) Browse to the *.BIN file that you want to burn and open it

4) A window saying "Foreign Image Settings" will open

5) Check the settings. They should be as followed:

* Type of image: leave it to Data Mode 1
* Select the Raw Data check box
Note ->> The block size will change automatically from 2048 to 2352
* Leave Image Header and Image Trailer unchanged and set to 0
* Leave "Scrambled" and "Swapped" check boxes unchecked

6) Click on burn!

7) Enjoy

Overburn CD with Nero

Start Nero

From the action-bar select File and select Preferences.



In the Preferences window, select Expert Features(1) and check the Enable overburn disc-at-once(2).



Choose a Maximum CD Length(3) and click OK(4) (*82:59:59 is the maximum value I suggest, but as you can see from the screen capture above I have set mine significantly higher. The reason is because I frequently use 99min 850 MB CD media).

For a more accurate test you can use a nero tool called nero speed test to see how much a specific CD is capable of being overburned . get it here

From the action-bar select File and select Write CD.



A window will appear when you have exceeded expected length, click OK to start the overburn copy.

Remember to set disk to burn Disc at Once, you cannot overburn in Track at Once Mode.

recover data from a quick-erased CD-RW disc

Procedure used to recover data from a quick-erased CD-RW disc

1. Make a file of exactly the size of the cdrw disc's capacity (650MB in my case).
(this step may not be needed)

2. With Nero I created a new project and added the file to it so that I have the disc filled. I gues you can also fill up the disc with other files.
The reason why I fill the disc is because I want Nero to make a session that uses the entire disc. Like I wrote earlier in this thread I experienced that my CD-Drive refuses to read off the disc beyond the session's boundaries. When you quick-erase a disc there is no session anymore so the drive will not read at all. Burning a new session will overwrite the data and burning only a small session will NOT make the drive read the other data that is still on the disc.
The reason why I used the one big file is so that I could later on recognize which part of the disc was overwritten by this file because this file contained all zeros (0x00).

3. I pressed burn and selected disc-at-once. Then while Nero was burning the leadin I pressed cancel. My CD-Drive finished writing the lead-in and Nero reported an error.
This is what was accomplished however: Now the disc contains a session that says that the used disc size is the complete disc. Nero did not get to writing file because I cancelled it. Good thing because I don't want Nero to write any files because my old data will get overwritten!
I gues it works the same with different writing software. Another method that I used during a test was simply press the reset button of the computer when the burning software was done with writing the lead-in and started with the files.

4. I had to restart the computer after cancelling burning.
With the cdrw disc inserted I saw in "my computer" that windows recognized that the disc was 650MB, clicking on it gave an error. Good so far!

Now with IsoBuster you can extract the sectors from a disc to a file. This is what I did.
I gues that if you have data-recovery software at this point it will be usefull because now (if all went well;)) the CD-Drive WILL read data from the entire disc. Anyway, I used ISO-Buster because the files that I needed to recover where a bit odd for nowadays (.XM, .S3M, .MP3):
In IsoBuster I had to do several steps:

Step 1: Find out from and to which sector the drive will read
By choosing "Sector View" you can look at any given sector.
Here I found out what the first and the last sectors where that are readable. (Hint I used the method for the old game: "Gues a number below 100, I'll tell if it is higher or lower than what you gues")
Step 2: Extract the actual sectors
By choosing "Extract From-To" you can extract any given range of sectors to a file. My disc was a data-disc so I choose the first extraction type "User data, 2048 bytes/block...".

In the end I got a .tao file which was about 650MB. I ran several programs on it to look for files inside a file by searching for file-header-paterns:
1. Multi Ripper 2.80 (for DOS, for the .XM files. It does many other file formats as well (jpg,png, bmp,wav,etc,etc +100). Try google with this query: Multi Ripper 2.80. I still had the file from good old days but I saw several good search results)

2. Winamp for mp3.
Winamp will scan any file when you give it the extension .mp3 and play it as one big song (so I renamed the .tao file to .mp3). I used the discwriter to get a .wav and the Adobe Audition to manually cut and save my songs. I looked at the MP3 file format and it is hard to find an mp3 file in a big file because it has no clear header just a bunch of mpeg-frames in most cases for me . A lot of my files had no ID3v2 or ID3v1 tags... But after a couple of hours I recovered everything.

Finally a list of used stuff:

Software:
- IsoBuster v1.5
- Nero 6.3.0.3
- Multi Ripper 2.80
- WinAmp v5.02
- Windows XP Pro NL (patched up)

Hardware:
- NEC DVDRW ND1300A 1.06

Disc:
- some old 4 speed cdrw

Recover scratched discs

I learn an old technique to how to recover damaged or scratched disks. In this case i have one borrowed game - MAX PAYNE 2 from Olsberg with a chuck of 6 mb lost with a scratch in CD1.

Here we cover some special techniques of how to create a full working CD from the scratched one.

First some tools will be needed:

1. Alcohol 120%
2. UltraISO
3. Windows XP/2000 (not tested on 95/98/me)
3. Small piece of cotton
4. Dry cleaner paper
5. Finally,cooking oil.

First step - preparing the CD

Get the cotton and drop some water, start cleaning the surface of CD.Do it 3 times and dry the water with a piece of dry cleaner paper.Drop some oil for cooking and start to wet the surface like you are washing the CD with the oil. Dry it carefully now. Some particles of oil will stay on the microsurface of the scrath. It's okay. Seems the oil helps the laser of the CD/DVD driver to read the surface again. Sure this will work with small unreadable scratchs - some hard scratchs loose parts of the surface of the CD where data is located and it's lost forever.But if it is loosed try anyway. Whith this tip 80% of the small scratched CD's coud be recovered.

Second Step - testing the CD

With Alcohol 120% make an ISO - image making wizard - and lets see if the app can read the loosed surface. In my case Alcohol 120% had recovered 60% of the data.This is not enough.Have tried other applications, they do not recover all the data. But the CD/DVD driver laser can recover all data in this case.The data is still there, what we do?

Third step - making the new CD

With the main copy ,windows explorer you can do it. Just create one folder with the same name of the CD label for future burn reference, and copy the CD contents to the folder. When the CD copy process find the scratch, in majority of the cases, it's slow down the reading and will recover all loosed data.If not, it just tell you there's an unreadable sector. In this case your CD is lost. But it's not my case,finally windows explorer got all the data from the scratch and made a copy in the folder.With the ultraISO, wrote the original CD label, drop the content of the folder and save as Iso. You can Test the new CD just mounting the iso in the Alcohol 120%. In my
case i did ISO of the two discs from MAX PAYNE 2 and tested installing from the mounted ISO. Works like a charm. I got the 4 mb lost again. So, I have burned the CD and now I have a working copy from the scratched one.

Sounds too bizzarre,but works. Course you can jump the cleaning process and try to copy
the content with Windows explorer. But in my case did not work without oil...