I normally wouldnt burn above 12x anyway, so this question is more academic than anything else, but...

I have a Verbatim 40x12x48x drive which I am pretty sure is a rebranded MSI burner. It is the slave to a CD-ROM drive on the secondary IDE channel. Here is the thing:

1)It only burns at 12x, anything higher produces "no seek complete" errors, even with TYs and Fujifilms, which I have determinded to be, in actual fact, TYs.

2)It only burns if I deactivate the other CD-ROM drive in the device manager (I am running Windows XP). Otherwise, no seek complete.

3)1 & 2 go out the window if I am either:
a) doing a direct copy from the CD-ROM on an audio cd, without using the hard drive
b) burning a cd that is less than abouit 150MB
in both of those cases it works flawlessly at any speed.

I have updated my aspi layer to 4.72 or whateve the latest is. I use EAC in burst mode for ripping (OH THE HUMANITY!) and Nero for burning.

I have two suspicions: IDE cables, and the lens in the burner. I have tried all kinds of possible IDE configurations, but nothing seems to help. Also, the drive used to work just fine, but it all of a sudden started failing a few months ago. That leaves me with the lens (I know I could be totally wrong)

Is there any way to tell if the lens is clouded/dirty, and then if it is faulty, fix it? This was a super cheapo drive, so if the answer is "not for more than $100", I'll be getting a new one.

Interesting fact: I was getting nothing but no seek complete errors until I removed all traces of Alcohol 120% from my system.

NOTE: It works perfectly fine now if i burn at 12x, and deactivated the CD-ROM drive, but the fact that I cant seem to solve this problem is driving me nuts.

If deactivating the CD ROM solves the problem, it certainly doesn't come from the lens. I'd rather suspect a problem with the mobo drivers.
Go to your mobo manufacturer site and search for the driver updates (IDE, Busmaster, anything that sounds like this...)

If it doesn't work, switch the primary and secondary IDE controllers (If your HD is primary master and your CD drives secondary master / slave, set the CD drives as primary master / slave and the HD as secondary master).
You can also try to set your burner as master and your CD ROM on slave if it doesn't work.

The most simple thing to look after IMO is to ... erm ... make sure both drives are jumpered correctly.

In UDMA66+ systems, the master has to be situated at the long end if an 80-wire IDE cable is used ...

Mastering a write device is always a good idea ... it could help to use "cable select" as well.

IDE & chipset drivers should be installed (not if the IDE drivers come from nVidia, though) but in most systems, M$ IDE drivers should work fine under Win 2000/XP/2003.

Another think to look for is transfer mode in the windows device manager ... DMA should be enabled for all devices.

...couldn't agree more I reinstalled my system to get rid of the nVidia ones (and to make sure that the system was as clean as poss) and I have not had a DVD or CD burning problem ever since... with the nVidia drivers it was coaster city.

Also worth checking ASPI and making sure that it's not corrupt.

Fairy

Also check that the files are not operating in PIO mode.

Make your writer the channel master and the other drive the slave. Make sure that neither is on "Cable Select". Also, make sure that you have an 80 conductor IDE cable. It's also a good idea to check in your BIOS that DMA is enabled for that channel.

If the other drive doesn't support DMA then the whole channel can't use it and you won't ever break the 12x barrier. In that case it's probably cheaper to buy a new modern CD-ROM drive to replace the one you have. They are about R150 here - so you should find one for less than $30.

I also have an el-cheapo MSI drive and it burns data reliably at 48x on good media.

Win2000 & WinXP will adjust DMA/PIO levels independently on a single channel between master & slave IIRC ...

I forgot to mention that both drives are on cable select. I'll fix that and see what happens.

[check] I actually tried putting them in pio mode when I was going nuts trying to fix this, but it didnt help.