LG GH22NS50 22X DVDRW SATA Drive OEM

Comment:
How come no one sends cables.. It's like the old comedian line where you buy tires and the guy says" you want those mounted on the car"...gosh gee uhh no i want them for wall-hanging. No cables... so make sure you have them... you want fries with that?

Comment:
This drive by itself would be a five star unit. It can be had for fairly cheap if you shop around, it burns DVDs and reads them like one would expect. However... it also comes bundled with a program called "bluebirds" which is loaded into the firmware of the drive. The CD included comes with a bunch of software of dubious value, including an annoying trial of Norton Anti-Virus which happily goes about installing itself unless you do the custom setup.Get the drive, don't bother with the CD, and download this fix for bluebird and you'll be happy: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?act=ST&f=5&t=135300 This review was modfied by poster @ 07-07-09 07:24 PM

Comment:
When the drive has no disk in it, a file manager indicates that it contains a disk called "Bluebirds". Looking at the contents of the "empty" drive reveals 4 files, which are presumably in the firmware of the drive. There is an autoexecute function, which if you double click on the drive installs "Bluebirds" software on your computer. This is not installed in the normal location such as Program Files, but in Documents and Settings/User Name (at least in XP). To be fair, the installed program has an uninstaller, but this does not remove the files from the firmware of the drive. The installed "Bluebirds" appears to do nothing when run, but a check of the startup lists with Spybot indicates that it is set to autorun on each startup. I have seen suggestions that this file is supposed to generate LG advertising popups after using the computer for a few days.A search for "Bluebirds" at the LG Canada website reveals nothing. This software is burned into the firmware of the drive. LG Canada by email support referred me to a posting at http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?act=ST&f=5&t=135300 for a software fix.To make matters worse, if you use the supplied LG disk and ask it to install all software for the drive, it will install a trial version of Norton antivirus. This can be avoided by using the custom setup, and unchecking Norton antivirus.There is nothing wrong with the drive itself, but I cannot recommend a piece of hardware which is used as a vehicle for advertising.

Comment:
Great deal when bought on sale. Loses a star for the Bluebird crap. Check my forum thread for a solution.