The device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media - Page 13

joolsca · 07-25-2009, 10:23 AM

Wow! he language fix worked for me! Amazing...never in a million years could I have found that myself....weird....

cvb · 07-26-2009, 02:47 AM

The evil “the device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media” arose today. I tried many “fixes” - air, reboots, etc. Nothing.

I even tried the International Voodoo Trick with many different variations (US English, English, etc.) but that too didn’t work.

I then tried the recently prescribed “Go to Staples and buy for $12 their CD/DVD Drive Cleaner”.

This worked!http://forums.macosxhints.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Thanks,

CVB
(problem machine: MacBook Pro 15” 2.16 GHz SuperDrive=Matshita UJ-857D)

2020 · 08-11-2009, 04:15 AM

Using MacBook Pro 15” 2.16 GHz SuperDrive=Matshita UJ-857D. OS 10.5.7
Had 'failed to calibrate' yesterday, tried restart, tried 3 seperate dvd's, tried language reset and nothing changed. Just Updated to 10.5.8 inserted 'used' disc from yesterday and worked first time.....

macoldtimer · 08-11-2009, 05:13 AM

I have a Mac Book Pro (15") and a G5 iMac both with same problem and the compressed airblast worked on both of them (I used a Maplin own brand cannister). It also worked with my boys' Wii that was ramdomly failing to read some (newer) discs

danbri · 08-27-2009, 09:52 AM

Hey, guess what! I found this page by googling the error message. I wasted two DVDs (Bulkpaq, fwiw) before trying the language-change trick above. I closed all my apps, rebooted, and tried again. It burned the disk just fine this time.

Re the skeptics above, yup I've just signed up on this site specifically to comment on this point. I've read it before but never had anything positive to contribute (I could rant about my Air's hinge, or iTunes corruption losing all my iphone apps, but I'm not sure that helps). If you think I'm a glovepuppet, send me an email, google me etc if you like, but it might be more productive to hassle the site admins into adding OpenID support so you can be more assured that I'm the guy whose openid is http://danbri.org.

So - how did it work? *Did* it work? Maybe for everyone it worked for, there were 10 who tried it, got a failure message, and decided not to waste any more time on the topic. Maybe just having less apps running (after a reboot) was a factor. Maybe it was to do with disk region. Or maybe just 1 time in 10 it would've worked anyway...

danbri · 08-27-2009, 05:12 PM

OK I take it back, the international settings voodoo trick stopped working for me when I tried burning a 2nd disk, some hours later. Maybe 'cos I have loads of apps open. Or maybe because I doubted the voodoo and it somehow sensed this. Still I thought I ought to make the effort to report the negative case, since the positive report earlier was my first forum post here.

july1962 · 08-27-2009, 08:04 PM

Haven't been able to burn DVD's for a month or more now, and the last few that I did burn will not play in my Blu-ray DVD player. Tried all the suggestions here, blown air and the "fix" and nothing has worked. I'm going to get Snow Leopard tomorrow and hopefully that will make it work again. From all that I've read, it seems pretty clear that it's related to the region settings.

july1962 · 08-28-2009, 06:43 PM

I have Snow Leopard installed and still can't burn dvds. But now there is a different message: "Unable to burn "name of disk" (The disc can't be burned; it might be incompatible with this disc drive. Please try a different brand of disk, or try burning at a slower speed.)

I've been using these TDK disks for years with no problems. I don't know what to do next.

july1962 · 08-28-2009, 09:14 PM

Update: I just took one of the dvd drives completely out, took it apart and blew it out with air and cleaned the lens with alcohol. Put it all back together and it's working. I haven't tried the second drive yet, but this looks promising.

sck_nogas · 08-29-2009, 03:15 PM

Okay, this is frigging annoying....

On my MacBook Pro 17, I could burn two DVD+R DL after doing the "international" trick, and the simpler version "reboot". But, now I can't burn a third one...

I have tried the cleaning disc, compressed air in the disk slot, rebooting, using a mini fan to blow under & over the laptop to make sure it's not a heat issue, and have even tried burning from different accounts. I can burn DVDs, CDs, but not DVD-DL.

Any thoughts?

Scott

sck_nogas · 08-29-2009, 04:14 PM

Update.... Powered off Mac, left mini-fan blowing under & over laptop to cool it... After an hour (lunch), came back and retried burning. It's now burning another DVD+R/DL disc. So, is this a heat issue, a power off/reboot issue, or flaky hardware issue?

Stay tuned.

sck_nogas · 08-29-2009, 04:57 PM

Update #2... Finished burning one disc. Next disc failed, so will power off and let sit for another hour before trying again.

sck_nogas · 08-29-2009, 05:50 PM

Update #3. After 45-50 minutes of being shutdown with the fan glowing across the laptop, I am burning another DVD+R/DL. So, I'm thinking either the power off helps this, or it's heat related. Any one else want to try just powering off for an hour?

sck_nogas · 08-29-2009, 08:28 PM

Update #4. The disc failed in the middle of the burn with the error "The device failed to respond properly, unable to recover or retry", so will shutdown and wait another hour or two before retry.

DVD Success · 09-01-2009, 04:17 AM

New user, just registering to say that the International language solution worked for me, and I am so relieved that it did! Saved much time and money. Thank you so much!

CanWeBowlPlease · 09-04-2009, 12:12 PM

I just wanted to share my experience with this issue:

Early 2008 Mac Pro with two 16x SuperDrives (Sony NEC Optiarc 7170A). BOTH SuperDrives stopped working properly at the same time. After a few months of burning only CDs, I suddenly found myself unable to burn DVDs.

I could read and write CDs, but I could only read, not write, DVDs. Attempts to burn DVDs gave the dreaded "could not calibrate laser for this media" message in Finder, Disk Utility, and Burn. (console Burn error: 0x8002006D The device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media.)

The fact that both SuperDrives went bad at the same time made me think that it had to be either the media or a software/firmware glitch.

I tried Memorex, TDK, and Verbatim media; neither would write. I tried canned air, a DVD-cleaning-disc kit, resetting SMC and PRAM (which of course involved rebooting), the International pref pane trick, even tried flashing the drive firmware with new and old firmware revisions. My last resort was to install Snow Leopard on a blank partition; I still got the same error message when trying to burn a DVD from the brand new, fresh OS install.

It seemed ridiculous to have a $3,000 machine unable to burn DVDs, so I ended up purchasing two new SuperDrives from MacSales/OWC. (Apple Original Pioneer DVR-112D-BK Internal [Black Bezel] 'SuperDrive' up to 16X DVD+/-R, up to 8X DVD+/-RW, Up to 8X Dual Layer +/-R DL, up to 32X CDR/RW Burner.) These were available to ship the same day for $34/ea.

I just received them; it took only 15 minutes to swap out the old drives with the new ones. They work perfectly, on all my media.

I suppose $70 for two new drives is more than worth the frustration of trying to resolve this problem by other means. I hope my experience can help others with this same issue.

Cerniuk · 09-08-2009, 08:32 AM

I don't remember enough about the incredibly bad idea of DVD region codes to be dangerous but... Given that the code in the Mac is probably integrated with the "International" settings, this little trick make considerable sense.

Consider that if the language changes, the region information (maybe all the characteristics) may possibly re-read from the disk drive. This would refresh the Mac's "knowledge" of the disk and then likely provide the laser calibration information back to the system. Suppose there is a bug in the system that corrupts the laser calibration system (aka like corrupting parameter ram or PRAM). This would reset the drive information in the system and make the drive work again.

Then, when the information was trashed by maybe the system... the problem would reoccur.

Also on this thread, someone took their system apart and used moose breath (compressed air stinks!) and cleaned the drive along with alcohol on the lens. By putting the drive back into the machine, they may have triggered the system's mechanism for reading that drive information back and thus re-captured the calibration parameters. It may have had nothing to do with the cleaning.

Then lastly, suppose you stick a disk into the drive and it cannot read it. It is conceivable that part of the Mac OS X recovery code may reach out and try to read the drive information in as a way to provide a last ditch effort in reading the disk. If that is a cleaning disk, the cleaning disk would be an unreadable or "bad" disk. Hence it is conceivable that the drive information again gets reset.

My drive is doing the same thing. Very annoying. No fix yet but am hacking away.

july1962 · 09-09-2009, 10:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cerniuk


	Also on this thread, someone took their system apart and used moose breath (compressed air stinks!) and cleaned the drive along with alcohol on the lens. By putting the drive back into the machine, they may have triggered the system's mechanism for reading that drive information back and thus re-captured the calibration parameters. It may have had nothing to do with the cleaning.

That was me....and...I have two internal drives. I took the top one out and cleaned it and that fixed it. The bottom one remains unworkable. So if it had "reset" something, wouldn't it have reset it for both?

jonr · 09-10-2009, 11:45 AM

Like some of the other posters to this thread, I signed on specifically to comment on the 'International' trick -- it definitely worked for me as well.

However, I'd like to point out that by this point it should be pretty clear that this failure message can be triggered by several problems:

1. Option #1: cheap media. Some reports of the unable to calibrate seem to be tied to using rubbish blank CDs/DVDs. I had huge problems (though never this error) with Sony DVDs, switched over to Verbatim and never had another issue.

2. Option #2: dirty drives. Someone has suggested (quite accurately I suspect) that cleaning the drive may simply trigger the same OS action as switching around the language settings, but you never know so if all else fails it's worth a try.

3. Option #3: warranty replacement. This doesn't seem to guarantee that Mat*****a drives (which seem to be the main [though not only] ones implicated here) won't keep on complaining. But if you can get a new, faster drive under warranty, then why not give it a go since it seems Apple's techs have little idea what's happening either.

4. Option #4: the international trick. I have a couple of things to add to this: first, I use British English and this trick worked for me as well (I'll note too that I specifically changed each of the three settings in Leopard once before closing and restarting). I only had to use the trick three times and each time needed to reboot after changing the settings before I could burn or read another disk.

5. Option #5: The International trick worked for me under Leopard. Before upgrading to Snow Leopard I did the trick one more time on purpose to 'reset' the drive and then used the Option key to select the installer disc as the startup device. Since then my problems have disappeared completely (fingers crossed, but going on three days now with multiple disc reads and writes).

Some thoughts on additional testing:

5. Does no-one having this issue have Boot Camp installed? I'd suggest rebooting under XP/Vista and seeing if the superdrive still moans about the laser. If that works, it might also be worth trying it under Parallels (though I'd suspect that this won't work). Anyway, if the drive works under Windows but not OSX then I think we've largely demonstrated that it's not a firmware issue.

6. For someone with the recurring issue, have you checked whether it happens after the machine goes to sleep? Is it definitive that the issue happens for the second burn no matter how much time has elapsed (or has not elapsed) between burns?

Anyway, just a few things I had on my mind... hope they're helpful for others with the same problem.

jon

mac_learner · 09-16-2009, 09:00 PM

I recently switched the power-saver settings on my 2008 MacBook Pro and suddenly started receiving the aforementioned error message, and was obviously unable to burn data DVDs at 4x speed. After speaking to someone at Apple and getting instructions on how to reset the machine, I decided to try the power settings first. Turns out that energy saver was the problem, and jacking it back up to super burn rate is what the machine needs to burn. Hope this helps.

07-26-2009, 02:47 AM	#242
cvb Registered User Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 1	International Trick vs. Staples The evil “the device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media” arose today. I tried many “fixes” - air, reboots, etc. Nothing. I even tried the International Voodoo Trick with many different variations (US English, English, etc.) but that too didn’t work. I then tried the recently prescribed “Go to Staples and buy for $12 their CD/DVD Drive Cleaner”. This worked!http://forums.macosxhints.com/images/smilies/smile.gif Thanks, CVB (problem machine: MacBook Pro 15” 2.16 GHz SuperDrive=Matshita UJ-857D)

08-11-2009, 05:13 AM	#244
macoldtimer Registered User Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 1	Airblast works for me I have a Mac Book Pro (15") and a G5 iMac both with same problem and the compressed airblast worked on both of them (I used a Maplin own brand cannister). It also worked with my boys' Wii that was ramdomly failing to read some (newer) discs

08-28-2009, 09:14 PM	#249
july1962 Prospect Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 15	Update Update: I just took one of the dvd drives completely out, took it apart and blew it out with air and cleaned the lens with alcohol. Put it all back together and it's working. I haven't tried the second drive yet, but this looks promising.

09-04-2009, 12:12 PM	#256
CanWeBowlPlease Prospect Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 2	New SuperDrives I just wanted to share my experience with this issue: Early 2008 Mac Pro with two 16x SuperDrives (Sony NEC Optiarc 7170A). BOTH SuperDrives stopped working properly at the same time. After a few months of burning only CDs, I suddenly found myself unable to burn DVDs. I could read and write CDs, but I could only read, not write, DVDs. Attempts to burn DVDs gave the dreaded "could not calibrate laser for this media" message in Finder, Disk Utility, and Burn. (console Burn error: 0x8002006D The device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media.) The fact that both SuperDrives went bad at the same time made me think that it had to be either the media or a software/firmware glitch. I tried Memorex, TDK, and Verbatim media; neither would write. I tried canned air, a DVD-cleaning-disc kit, resetting SMC and PRAM (which of course involved rebooting), the International pref pane trick, even tried flashing the drive firmware with new and old firmware revisions. My last resort was to install Snow Leopard on a blank partition; I still got the same error message when trying to burn a DVD from the brand new, fresh OS install. It seemed ridiculous to have a $3,000 machine unable to burn DVDs, so I ended up purchasing two new SuperDrives from MacSales/OWC. (Apple Original Pioneer DVR-112D-BK Internal [Black Bezel] 'SuperDrive' up to 16X DVD+/-R, up to 8X DVD+/-RW, Up to 8X Dual Layer +/-R DL, up to 32X CDR/RW Burner.) These were available to ship the same day for $34/ea. I just received them; it took only 15 minutes to swap out the old drives with the new ones. They work perfectly, on all my media. I suppose $70 for two new drives is more than worth the frustration of trying to resolve this problem by other means. I hope my experience can help others with this same issue.

07-25-2009, 10:23 AM	#241
joolsca Registered User Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 1	Wow! he language fix worked for me! Amazing...never in a million years could I have found that myself....weird....

08-11-2009, 04:15 AM	#243
2020 Registered User Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 1	Using MacBook Pro 15” 2.16 GHz SuperDrive=Matshita UJ-857D. OS 10.5.7 Had 'failed to calibrate' yesterday, tried restart, tried 3 seperate dvd's, tried language reset and nothing changed. Just Updated to 10.5.8 inserted 'used' disc from yesterday and worked first time.....

08-27-2009, 09:52 AM	#245
danbri Prospect Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 2	Hey, guess what! I found this page by googling the error message. I wasted two DVDs (Bulkpaq, fwiw) before trying the language-change trick above. I closed all my apps, rebooted, and tried again. It burned the disk just fine this time. Re the skeptics above, yup I've just signed up on this site specifically to comment on this point. I've read it before but never had anything positive to contribute (I could rant about my Air's hinge, or iTunes corruption losing all my iphone apps, but I'm not sure that helps). If you think I'm a glovepuppet, send me an email, google me etc if you like, but it might be more productive to hassle the site admins into adding OpenID support so you can be more assured that I'm the guy whose openid is http://danbri.org. So - how did it work? Did it work? Maybe for everyone it worked for, there were 10 who tried it, got a failure message, and decided not to waste any more time on the topic. Maybe just having less apps running (after a reboot) was a factor. Maybe it was to do with disk region. Or maybe just 1 time in 10 it would've worked anyway...

08-27-2009, 05:12 PM	#246
danbri Prospect Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 2	OK I take it back, the international settings voodoo trick stopped working for me when I tried burning a 2nd disk, some hours later. Maybe 'cos I have loads of apps open. Or maybe because I doubted the voodoo and it somehow sensed this. Still I thought I ought to make the effort to report the negative case, since the positive report earlier was my first forum post here.

08-27-2009, 08:04 PM	#247
july1962 Prospect Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 15	Haven't been able to burn DVD's for a month or more now, and the last few that I did burn will not play in my Blu-ray DVD player. Tried all the suggestions here, blown air and the "fix" and nothing has worked. I'm going to get Snow Leopard tomorrow and hopefully that will make it work again. From all that I've read, it seems pretty clear that it's related to the region settings.

08-28-2009, 06:43 PM	#248
july1962 Prospect Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 15	I have Snow Leopard installed and still can't burn dvds. But now there is a different message: "Unable to burn "name of disk" (The disc can't be burned; it might be incompatible with this disc drive. Please try a different brand of disk, or try burning at a slower speed.) I've been using these TDK disks for years with no problems. I don't know what to do next.

08-29-2009, 03:15 PM	#250
sck_nogas Prospect Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 10	Okay, this is frigging annoying.... On my MacBook Pro 17, I could burn two DVD+R DL after doing the "international" trick, and the simpler version "reboot". But, now I can't burn a third one... I have tried the cleaning disc, compressed air in the disk slot, rebooting, using a mini fan to blow under & over the laptop to make sure it's not a heat issue, and have even tried burning from different accounts. I can burn DVDs, CDs, but not DVD-DL. Any thoughts? Scott

08-29-2009, 04:14 PM	#251
sck_nogas Prospect Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 10	Update.... Powered off Mac, left mini-fan blowing under & over laptop to cool it... After an hour (lunch), came back and retried burning. It's now burning another DVD+R/DL disc. So, is this a heat issue, a power off/reboot issue, or flaky hardware issue? Stay tuned.

08-29-2009, 04:57 PM	#252
sck_nogas Prospect Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 10	Update #2... Finished burning one disc. Next disc failed, so will power off and let sit for another hour before trying again.

08-29-2009, 05:50 PM	#253
sck_nogas Prospect Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 10	Update #3. After 45-50 minutes of being shutdown with the fan glowing across the laptop, I am burning another DVD+R/DL. So, I'm thinking either the power off helps this, or it's heat related. Any one else want to try just powering off for an hour?

08-29-2009, 08:28 PM	#254
sck_nogas Prospect Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 10	Update #4. The disc failed in the middle of the burn with the error "The device failed to respond properly, unable to recover or retry", so will shutdown and wait another hour or two before retry.

09-01-2009, 04:17 AM	#255
DVD Success Registered User Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 1	New user, just registering to say that the International language solution worked for me, and I am so relieved that it did! Saved much time and money. Thank you so much!

09-08-2009, 08:32 AM	#257
Cerniuk Registered User Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 1	I don't remember enough about the incredibly bad idea of DVD region codes to be dangerous but... Given that the code in the Mac is probably integrated with the "International" settings, this little trick make considerable sense. Consider that if the language changes, the region information (maybe all the characteristics) may possibly re-read from the disk drive. This would refresh the Mac's "knowledge" of the disk and then likely provide the laser calibration information back to the system. Suppose there is a bug in the system that corrupts the laser calibration system (aka like corrupting parameter ram or PRAM). This would reset the drive information in the system and make the drive work again. Then, when the information was trashed by maybe the system... the problem would reoccur. Also on this thread, someone took their system apart and used moose breath (compressed air stinks!) and cleaned the drive along with alcohol on the lens. By putting the drive back into the machine, they may have triggered the system's mechanism for reading that drive information back and thus re-captured the calibration parameters. It may have had nothing to do with the cleaning. Then lastly, suppose you stick a disk into the drive and it cannot read it. It is conceivable that part of the Mac OS X recovery code may reach out and try to read the drive information in as a way to provide a last ditch effort in reading the disk. If that is a cleaning disk, the cleaning disk would be an unreadable or "bad" disk. Hence it is conceivable that the drive information again gets reset. My drive is doing the same thing. Very annoying. No fix yet but am hacking away.

09-10-2009, 11:45 AM	#259
jonr Registered User Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 1	Like some of the other posters to this thread, I signed on specifically to comment on the 'International' trick -- it definitely worked for me as well. However, I'd like to point out that by this point it should be pretty clear that this failure message can be triggered by several problems: 1. Option #1: cheap media. Some reports of the unable to calibrate seem to be tied to using rubbish blank CDs/DVDs. I had huge problems (though never this error) with Sony DVDs, switched over to Verbatim and never had another issue. 2. Option #2: dirty drives. Someone has suggested (quite accurately I suspect) that cleaning the drive may simply trigger the same OS action as switching around the language settings, but you never know so if all else fails it's worth a try. 3. Option #3: warranty replacement. This doesn't seem to guarantee that Mat****a drives (which seem to be the main [though not only] ones implicated here) won't keep on complaining. But if you can get a new, faster drive under warranty, then why not give it a go since it seems Apple's techs have little idea what's happening either. 4. Option #4: the international trick. I have a couple of things to add to this: first, I use British English and this trick worked for me as well (I'll note too that I specifically changed each of the three settings in Leopard once before closing and restarting). I only had to use the trick three times and each time needed to reboot after changing the settings before I could burn or read another disk. 5. Option #5: The International trick worked for me under Leopard. Before upgrading to Snow Leopard I did the trick one more time on purpose to 'reset' the drive and then used the Option key to select the installer disc as the startup device. Since then my problems have disappeared completely (fingers crossed, but going on three days now with multiple disc reads and writes). Some thoughts on additional testing: 5. Does no-one having this issue have Boot Camp installed? I'd suggest rebooting under XP/Vista and seeing if the superdrive still moans about the laser. If that works, it might also be worth trying it under Parallels (though I'd suspect that this won't* work). Anyway, if the drive works under Windows but not OSX then I think we've largely demonstrated that it's not a firmware issue. 6. For someone with the recurring issue, have you checked whether it happens after the machine goes to sleep? Is it definitive that the issue happens for the second burn no matter how much time has elapsed (or has not elapsed) between burns? Anyway, just a few things I had on my mind... hope they're helpful for others with the same problem. jon

09-16-2009, 09:00 PM	#260
mac_learner Registered User Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 1	I recently switched the power-saver settings on my 2008 MacBook Pro and suddenly started receiving the aforementioned error message, and was obviously unable to burn data DVDs at 4x speed. After speaking to someone at Apple and getting instructions on how to reset the machine, I decided to try the power settings first. Turns out that energy saver was the problem, and jacking it back up to super burn rate is what the machine needs to burn. Hope this helps.