The Firmware Page

I wish to update my Dell Inspiron 1420 DVD-RW drive's firmware for the purpose of ripping DVD's faster. In the device manager my DVD player is listed as hl-dt-st dvd+-RW GSA-t21n ata device. My system is running Windows Vista Service Pack 2. Like many people, my ripping speeds on Vista are half that than on my other Windows XP computer. If you need any more information please let me know. ( I have tried to figure out how to do this by reading the board, but I am quite confused .)

Start with the Discinfo output (see the FAQ).

I installed DiscInfo. What information am I looking for here? I am pretty computer proficient, just really having a hard time with this.

Pleasepost the Discinfo output for the drive.

Sorry been away for awhile posting.... is this what you need?

DISCINFO VERSION : 1.7.0 BETA.12
VENDOR : HL-DT-ST
MODEL : DVD+-RW GSA-T21N
REVISION : A1R1
LOADING MECHANISM : Tray
SERIAL NUMBER : KZ189T43722
NUMBER VOL. LEVELS : 256
BUFFER SIZE : 2048KB
INTERFACE : ATAPI
RPC2 SCHEME : YES
STATUS : Set
USER CHANGES : 4
VENDOR CHANGES : 4
CURRENT REGION : 1
ANALOG AUDIO PLAY : YES
COMPOSITE OUTPUT : NO
DIGITAL PORT-PORT1 : NO
DIGITAL PORT-PORT2 : NO
READ UPC CODE : YES
MULTISESSION READ : YES
MODE 2 FORM 1 : YES
MODE 2 FORM 2 : YES
READ ISRC CODE : YES
READ BAD CODE : NO
BUFFER UNDER-RUN : YES
MT. RAINIER : NO
CAN READ CDR : YES
CAN READ CDRW : YES
CAN READ CDRM2 : YES
CAN WRITE CDR : YES
CAN WRITE CDRW : YES
CAN TEST WRITE : YES
CAN READ DVD-ROM : YES
CAN READ DVD-R : YES
CAN READ DVD-RW : YES
CAN READ DVD-RAM : YES
CAN READ DVD+R : YES
CAN READ DVD+RW : YES
CAN WRITE DVD-R : YES
CAN WRITE DVD-RW : YES
CAN WRITE DVD-RAM : YES
CAN WRITE DVD+R : YES
CAN WRITE DVD+RW : YES
MAX CDR READ SPEED : 31
MAX CDR WRITE SPEED: 24

You find the official Dell firmware at http://ftp.us.dell.com/rmsd/GSA-T21N_A1R1.zip. Apply the read speed patch with my MCSE tool to the GSAT21NA1R1.exe file you find in the Windows directory, save it and start the patched file to remove the riplock.

Thank you so much! Finally back to decent ripping speed.

added to the database, for future reference

I, too, have one of these HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GSA-T21N drives, but couldn't seem to find a firmware flash that would make it play DVDs from any region. I am probably just missing something obvious, but maybe someone can point me in the right direction.

(My computer has Windows Vista (which makes the software "DVD Region Killer" not work) and just to make sure things are updated, I followed the suggestion in an earlier post and made sure the firmware at http://ftp.us.dell.com/rmsd/GSA-T21N_A1R1.zip was applied.)

Thank you in advance for your time and help!

apply the RPC2 Autoreset patch with MCSE, then flash using the saved flasher.