EAC help (for newbie to EAC)

[mountaindew]

I have downloaded and unzipped EAC. At the moment, it is on my external firewire drive. When I tried to launch it by clicking on the app, my computer crashed (a rare occurrence). I'm running XP Pro, and have 3 CD drives -- an external Plextor PX712A, an internal DVD+-RW, and an internal DVD-ROM. I've read the tutorial linked in Five's signature, and some other tutorials as well, but can't figure out how to prevent the crash. As far as I can tell, there is no further installation to be done (other than perhaps installing the aspi layer .dll in the unzipped EAC folder, which I haven't done -- do I need this?). Should I put EAC on the same hard drive as my system? Do I need to have blank or audio CDs in all my drives before attempting to launch EAC? Help will be appreciated as always. TIA.

[pmonk]

First question - which version of EAC did you DL???

[Five]

this is weird... you should be able to just unzip EAC to a folder and run it from anywhere on your computer. As pmonk asked, which version of EAC? Just a hunch, it could possibly be the 3rd drive messing with it... perhaps try running it with the external drive disconnected. Whether there's CDs in the drives shouldn't effect anything.

[jcrab66]

my computer looks like a porcupine with all these drives sticking out of it but i have never had that problem with EAC...

[mountaindew]

I d/l'd version 0.95 prebeta 5 (the latest). Perhaps there are new and as yet unknown issues with the prebeta?

[Five]

I've been using 0.95 prebeta 5 for a while with no problems... try downloading the older versions starting with V0.85 beta 4 and see if they work for you.

[Bieke2be]

i'm also using 0.95 prebeta 5 for a while, i've 2 drives, no problem.

[Horace]

I'd go the the EAC forum HERE . I have found answers to compatibility issues posted there. It is very helpful.

Horace

It's almost always worth getting a copy of the little Nero ASPI dll and copying it into the EAC folder if you're having any kind of problem with EAC recognizing your drives, etc. It's easy to do, and just as important easy to un-do! Unlike some of those (obsolete and worse than useless) ForceASPI routines that people recommend.

I could never get my external drive to be recognized until I did that.

http://ww2.nero.com/us/WNASPI32.DLL.html

You also have to be sure EAC is set to use external ASPI. Which can admittedly be a problem if it won't open or crashes your system.

If it's just in the EAC program folder, AFAIK it doesn't affect the ASPI used by other programs. I've had more than one ASPI version on a system before.

[mountaindew]

Thank you all so much. Buzzy's suggestion worked perfectly. Also checked the EAC forums (thanks, Horace), and discovered this is a problem with Plextor external drives -- saw the same report for PX-708 and PX-716 USB 2.0 drives. Does anyone have any configuration tips -- since I have two burners, should I configure one for speed and one for accuracy? Again, TIA. Technobabble always comes up with the answers.

I only have one CD R/W but if I had two I would probably just configure one for ripping. But I would always configure for accuracy over speed.

You might want to configure your read offset correction as well. That's supposed to be very easy to do with Plextors.