I seem to be having troubles with my burner. I have a Toshiba ODD-DVD SD-R5272 DVD/CD combination burner. Of late I have been trying to burn video and data to DVD. I have a brand-new spindle of DVDs and Nero keeps refusing to burn to certain disks (saying the disk is not empty for video and not showing the burn button at all for data). I had a stack of 6 discs, of which 1 Nero would burn to. I'm presently downloading another DVD burning program to see if the problem is with Nero.
Possibly related to this is odd behaviour by the drive. When there is no disk in the drive, it will open an empty folder if I open it in My Computer instead of the "Please insert disk into drive X:" prompt. Also, whenever I open or close the drive, the Windows Installer box will pop up and the progress bar will fill and then it will disappear.
Does anyone have any idea what the hell is going on?!
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Aliens have infected your machine with anal probing software.
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
There's this thing that I don't entirely understand with the disc-writing software these days (why in my day we didn't have your fancy tray-loaders, we had to load our blanks into cartridges!) where it creates a drive image (on the desktop, in My Documents, somewhere, your results may vary) which at some later point it assumes you will tell it to actually burn to disc.
This has the advantage that until you burn it, this directory will behave exactly like a hard drive (which makes sense considering that it is) in that you can add files, remove files, rename files, do all the things one expects. And then it expects you will burn it and its will be like frozen in time.
But it's confusing because the user thinks they have a disc even when it's never been burned, or they expect to drag things into a program and arrange their files there and not in their OS. So that might be part of it.
As to the media, I don't know why it would be an intermitent problem unless it's faulty media (or media to which stuff had previously been written). Another thing to watch is that there are commercially available "blank" media for standalone audio CD burners and (I expect) DVD burners. This media is not actually blank and usually has some lead-in control data pre-recorded to format it properly with the appliance. What you really want is blank data media as that's what your computer will be expecting.
None of which may help at all, but might be of general interest.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
I'm going to toss this question out there, too, since we talking about burners. I have a desktop with a CD-R, and I think it has a 48x write speed. I know it worked fine when I had 48x CDs to burn to. It's been a while since I had used it (maybe six to eight months). I bought a new spindle of CDs that are 52x, but the CD-R won't write to them. It stalls out in the middle of the write session. I haven't found any 48x CDs to toss in there to see if the CD-R will write to them.
What do y'all think? Is this a problem with the media, or do y'all think it's a hardware or software issue? The computer runs XP Home, and I tried using both Roxio Easy CD Creator and Windows' CD burning utility. This is my mom's computer, it has a lot of crap on it, and is a Gateway.
Posted by Shakaar (Member # 1782) on :
Some time after I got my new HP the burner stopped working- it could read/write DVDs, but couldn't recognize any CDs- it'd do the "please insert a disk" thing too... so I used the handy dandy talk to an HP person on the computer chat thing... and they went though things, and said that CD's by a list of companies weren't as good as this other list- so try those... after that didn't work, they sent me a new burner because they declared it defective- and the new one has been happy. So quite possibly yours up and went flippy. Siegfried- I'd certainly try the first disks you used, but 52x shouldn't cause that type of problem. I would also guess that it is not a software issue, if it suddenly seemed to break, and you have not changed the drivers or such for the burner.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Topher : Do you have access to another burner, so you can test the discs? Because, if it's specific discs that won't work, you may, as has been mentioned, have just gotten a bad batch.
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
You also might just try burning at a lower speed, Siegfried. I remember there was something sneaky about a physical difference between, like, 4X and the 12-350X (or whatever it is now) Hi-Speed� discs such that 4X burners couldn't use 12X media. (Which seems lame to me) I got a bunch of free higher speed discs when my father realized this. I dunno if it's the same thing though.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
quote:Siegfried- I'd certainly try the first disks you used, but 52x shouldn't cause that type of problem. I would also guess that it is not a software issue, if it suddenly seemed to break, and you have not changed the drivers or such for the burner.
Well, it wasn't all of a sudden. There was a gap of about six to eight months from the time I last used it to just recently. It's my mom's computer, and she's likes to download lots of little games (some loaded with spyware, apparently) and such. If I still had any blank 48x CDs to try, I would. I haven't looked everywhere, but most of the places near me that stock blank CDs (Wal-Mart, Office Depot, Best Buy, etc.) usually only have the 52x. I have another laptop, though, that has a burner that handles the 52x CDs just fine, so my supply isn't going to waste.
quote:You also might just try burning at a lower speed, Siegfried.
I did try doing this. The Easy CD Creator program gives me an option on the write speed (with a max of 48x). I tried a lot of the slower options, and I had the same problem: about a third to halfway through the write session the write speed would drive to 1x or 2x and then abort with errors. Using Windows, I never saw an option for adjusting the write speed, but it still just ate discs and threw up errors.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
The only other DVD burner I have access to is on my dad's computer, and I don't know when I'll be going home next. So, that doesn't really help me any.
But that still doesn't explain Windows' odd behaviour.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
The Windows Installer bit went away; it was due to an unfinished installation when I dismounted an installer disk image.
I've tried to burn a data disc and both times it aborted at 62%. I checked the error messages this time and it said "Illegal Disc" and "Could not perfom end of Disc-at-once". Mayhaps my drive is dying?
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
Sieg, I'd say that since it's your mom's computer and she may have all the little spyware bits on it, some little program or two or three is running in the background and actually interfering with the burning process. It may be causing buffer underruns in which you will get errors. Clean up her computer, tell her not to download anything without your approval and try burning a disc again. When you're burning a disc it's best not to have any programs running other than your burning program. Then make sure the screensaver will never start and that the computer won't go down into a "sleep" mode.
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
Topher, have you tried reloading the drivers for the disk drive, I know this sounds obvious but I haven't seen where you mentioned it.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
I haven't tried reloading drivers. I never had to load them in the first place; XP did it all for me...
Posted by Toadkiller (Member # 425) on :
I should say it has.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
MAKING FUN OF WINDOWS OH MAN GET YOUR COAT
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
quote:Sieg, I'd say that since it's your mom's computer and she may have all the little spyware bits on it, some little program or two or three is running in the background and actually interfering with the burning process. It may be causing buffer underruns in which you will get errors.
I ran Ad-Aware for the first time in ages on her computer about a week ago, and it found over 200 items. Most of them were cookies, but I was rather surprised by how many weren't. I need to spend some quality with the services.msc and Google. Just idling, there's about forty processes that are running.
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
IKES! That can't be good.
I'm not sure I get why so many sofware and peripheral companies (I'm looking at you, RealPlayer) feel entirely justified in installing so much stuff into your task bar (or whatever that little zone is bottom right). My grandfather bought my grandmother a Dell laptop with XP Home on it so she could learn the internet (and spare him typing in all her emails). Anyway it felt like I was going at it with hedgeclippers just with the pre-installed software looking for updates and checking on the other pre-installed stuff. And that's just legit stuff, without any mal-ware. But so yeah, that stuff could be eating clock cycles or loading a complicated screen-saver could potentially interrupt your burning...
There's like buffer underrun prevention stuff that's supposed to significantly reduce the number of coasters you make, but I've never been entirely clear on whether that's hardware (on the drive) or software. At any rate it doesn't exactly make for 100% success rates. Even on beautiful and perfect shiny new macs. I was burning stuff across my home network instead of locally, and got bored and played Halo online in the middle. Turns out that was less than smart.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"...task bar (or whatever that little zone is bottom right)."
System tray. The taskbar is the whole grey thing from the Start button to the clock.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
So on my latest attempt to burn I get this error message:
Which I don't understand. And of course I have another coaster.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
"System tray."
The official term is Taskbar Notification Area, actually. Don't refer to it as the "system tray" again, or I will be forced to take unpleasant measures.
"I'm not sure I get why so many sofware and peripheral companies (I'm looking at you, RealPlayer) feel entirely justified in installing so much stuff into your task bar TNA..."
Because each of those companies thinks that users like being able to directly access the state of their programs and not having oversized taskbar buttons cluttering up their desktop and so are willing to turn a blind eye to the truly horrendous abuse of notification icons for that purpose. Tsk, eh?
(That being said, have you ever looked at the default OSX Dock?)
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Tophy: which version of Nero(Vision) do you have, and which other burning software (if any) is installed on your computer?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"The official term is Taskbar Notification Area, actually. Don't refer to it as the 'system tray' again, or I will be forced to take unpleasant measures."
Hey, it's the programmers' own fault for not removing the last reference to the name "tray" when they changed it.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
TNA stands for something else that has nothing to do with a computer.... I am back dated, so mine is still a systray.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
I am running (or rather, attempting to run) NeroVision Express 3. I also have Nero Express 6 and Cheetah DVD Burner.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
OK, those versions are somewhat aged, but not really elderly yet, which makes me suspect your burner simply doesn't like the DVDs you're feeding it (the composition of their reflective layer could be off, for example) and has a case of, erh, heartburn from them. Install the shareware version of Nero 7 (but use Ahead's Clean Tool to remove all traces of your current Nero installation before you do) and then try to burn a disc from your current batch (and should that not get rid of the memory error, upgrade your drive's firmware) to see whether the problem is software-related, and if you can, buy a second batch from another brand to test with as well.
Also, the next time it craps out on you, could you post the contents of Nero's error-log file (located in the same directory you installed Nero in)?
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
I ran the Clean Tool and got this message: "The Nero General CleanTool has detected some Nero applications which are not supported by this version. In order to avoid damaging of your system, the application will be closed now."
But I went ahead and installed a version of Nero 7 anyways. Bad yes/no?
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Did you uninstall all the other burners before running Clean Tool?
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
I uninstalled the old Nero stuff, yes. Ran the CleanTool, got that error message.
I was able to successfully burn a video DVD. Tried data DVD with one of the "unusuable" DVDs from before but it wouldn't go. Haven't tried a data DVD with a new disk yet.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
I know, it was a silly question, but, I have known CIS grads that did some real goofy stuff, like not uninstalling before hand....
Con to you. You can get the Grats after you have everythng working.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
Tried burning data again, didn't work. This is Nero's log file.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
I went ahead and installed a version of Nero 7 anyways. Bad yes/no?
Not so much as "bad" as "unwise". However...
quote: Sense Key: 0x03 (KEY_MEDIUM_ERROR) Sense Code: 0x0C Sense Qual: 0x00
..., this IS bad, as is...
quote: Sense Key: 0x05 (KEY_ILLEGAL_REQUEST) Sense Code: 0x30 Sense Qual: 0x05
...three times in a row, the combination of which strongly suggests bad media (KEY_MEDIUM_ERROR is a driver code indicating that Nero encountered an unrecoverable error condition (0x03 0x0C 0x00), probably resulting from a flaw in your DVD-R or in the data being recorded to it), not to mention that...
quote: Physical memory : 511MB (523808kB) Free physical memory: 38MB (39860kB) Memory in use : 92 %
...is a sign of extremely poor computer management. B)
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Depending on how comfortable you are with stuff like this, you could try installing this firmware update. It apparently has a 733t new writing algorithm. Which is nice.
I'm sure I read somewhere that Pioneer discs are the best to use, as they are the ones that DVD makers use for testing. This could be an old wive's tale, however.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
I installed the firmware update but have yet to attempt burning something. Will report back when I do.
How can I better manage my computer? I don't really pay much attention to the memory. But I don't know what would be using that much of my memory.
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
Well first, prevent the startup of any programs you hardly or don't ever use. Second, shut down all other programs when you gonna burn a disc. Third, don't touch the computer at all during a burn. Go do something else away from the computer.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"It apparently has a 733t new writing algorithm."
Teet?
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Like nipples.
Topher: How many things have you got running in the system not-tray-thing-that-is-in-the-bottom-right-hand-corner?
Also, go to your start menu, click run, and type "msconfig" and hit enter. Click on the startup tab and tell me everything that's listed. Everything.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
How do you get rid of crappy Windows Messenger (it's in my right-hand thingie and I'll never use it)?
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
Go to Tools->Options, then look under the Preferences tab. The first option says "Run Windows Messenger when Windows starts". Just deselect that, and you should be fine.
B.J.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
The thing by the clock: iTunes, Azureus, Trillian, Network Connection, MSN Messenger, volume control, Logitech Video thing, Winamp, Symantec Antivirus, SoundMAX Digital Integrated Audio.
LVCOMSX ISStart LogiTray NeroCheck msmsgs ManifestEngine MsgPlus NMBgMonitor msnmsgr Adobe Acrobat Speed Launcher AutoCAD Startup Accelerator Trillian
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
Unless you constantly listen to your music with iTunes or winamp, shut it down. Similar reason with Trillian. You certainly don't need iTunes helper open unless you need a little help with the program. You don't need to startup accelerator for Autocad or Acrobat. Can't really say anything about the other programs. But if I think realsched is part of Real Player, shut that off too.
And of course, close all programs when you're gonna burn a disc. And disable the internet connection as well.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
That's just too much of a hassle. I mean, does it really make that big of a difference?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I guess it depends upon your computer. I usually shut nothing down when I burn a disc. At most, I'll stop Winamp if it happens to be playing. And I haven't had a problem.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
When burning data disks I don't tend to shut things down. I'll pause iTunes, but I'll usually let the computer do its thing. When burning video, I usually start the process when I go to bed or when I go to class as it takes so long.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by B.J.: Go to Tools->Options, then look under the Preferences tab. The first option says "Run Windows Messenger when Windows starts". Just deselect that, and you should be fine.
B.J.
Many thanks!
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Deleting startup stuff doesn't make a huge difference, but it does make a difference, mainly in system stability. The less things running, the less possible conflicts there are. And most of those things running at startup do nothing anyway.
You can delte winampa realsched NvCpl MsgPlus iTunesHelper qttask Acrotray NeroCheck Adobe Acrobat Speed Launcher AutoCAD Startup Accelerator
...with no problems, as they do nothing at all. I don't recognise most of the others, so I can't help there.
(If you want Winamp, put it in your Quicklaunch bar instead. It takes up no resources to be there.)
(You also seem to have Messenger in there twice.)
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
I have the Messenger Plus! addon, so I think that might need to be in the startup. As for why there are two Messengers, I have no idea.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
What is the Messenger Plus! add-on, anyway?
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Regarding the two instances of Windows Messenger, could that be a result of having Trillian running (assuming your Trillian is configured to use Windows Messenger)? Just thinking out loud, I've nver used Trillian myself.
Or, hypothesizing further, could you still have both Windows Messenger and MSN Messenger installed on your PC? Because they are two different things, WM comes as part of XP but downloading and installing the newest version of MSNM doesn't remove WM. Check your add/remove programs.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
msmsgs.exe is the Windows Messenger executable, msnmsgr.exe the MSN Messenger one.
(Trillian, being stand-alone, doesn't use either.)
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
The Messenger Plus! addon adds the ability to send audio clips, have auto-replies, custom statuses, etc.
No idea how to permanently remove Windows Messenger, though.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
quote:Originally posted by B.J.: Go to Tools->Options, then look under the Preferences tab. The first option says "Run Windows Messenger when Windows starts". Just deselect that, and you should be fine.
B.J.
You can also go to Control Panel, select Add/Remove Programs, then select "option Windows components" from the box on the side. Then just untick the Windows Messenger box.
Although to be honest, Real and it's ilk are far worse, as they're the sort of naughty little programs that check the internet constantly and cause system instability.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
