Absolutly major DVD buring issues

galwaydude18

Hi I have winxp sp2, 2gb ram, amd dualcore and a dfi lanpary mother board.

Now a while back my dvd drive failed on me. Refused to burn anything at all. I sent the drive back to Komplett who replaced it with a brand new sony dvd rw for me. I have formatted the pc and reinstalled nero but still have the same problems. It might burn to only 5%, 40%, 63% etc. and then stop and crash the pc and it becomes totaly non responsive and have to manually turn it off cause I cant shut it down.

I have reinstalled nero several times, reinstalled winxp (by formatting the pc), drivers etc. Run memtest the other night for a hour and a half and no errors came up on the test. At this stage i'm out of ideas and badly need your help with this situation. Any help is most appreciated..

Thanks in advance:)

Tom Dunne

Phew. Thank God it wasn't a trivial DVD burning problem you were having.

Have you tried different media - DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, CD-R,CD-RW? Also, what are you trying to burn - films or data? If it's one, try the other. Try a small file first, see will it burn successfully.

galwaydude18

ya tried different media! Just trying burn a few iso files and also back up data on my pc. Nothing will bur successfully on it. I'm at the stage where I'm susspecting it's the motherboard. Is there any program I can use to test it?

Khannie

You can switch around the IDE cables on the motherboard. If your hard drive is working perfectly, then just swap them around at the motherboard.

rogue-entity

Do a simulated write of the stuff you wanted to burn to DVD first, if it fails you wont wreck the blank disc. If it succeeds you can continue to burn to the real disc without hassle. The simulation performs the write process but disables the write laser so the disc itself is not written to.

I had problems burning data to DVD that I never resolved, in both cases the burn failed with a Buffer Underrun error, and I have BurnProof/JustLink etc BU Protection. That happened with NTL CD Maker, I dont think I have had a problem with Nero.

galwaydude18

Khannie I'l give that a go. rogue-entity I'l do the simulated burn first in the future! I have wrecked about 25 perfectly new Memored dvd-r at this stage1

Kimbot

I have the very same problem!! It will write DVD's but fail on CD's and some DVD's!! Its weird!!

8T8

Is DMA enabled, use Nero Info tool to verify by starting it from the Nero->Tools sub-menu and going into the configuration tab.

Also under the drive tab what make & model of the drive is it and what firmware is it using ?

All your media isn't Memorex is it, as Memorex use a lot of CMC MAG which is often of questionable quality.

Also defrag your HD, yes I'm serious this can actually make a difference a badly fragmented HD can affect the buffer like you describe.

Dont know what kind of DFI Lanparty you have but if it is an NVIDIA one and you have installed their IDE drivers you need to remove those as they conflict with certain DVDRW drives.

Cuddlesworth

Lol, this one is easy. Do not install n-vidia Ide drivers. Ever.

galwaydude18

why not isntall n-vidia Ide drivers? It's only in the last month and a bit this problem has come up! It used to burn everything no problem at all.

Ya all my media is Memorex. What is CMC MAG? Why is it often of questionable quality?

If DMA is not enabled how do I enable it?

Cuddlesworth

galwaydude18 wrote:

why not isntall n-vidia Ide drivers? It's only in the last month and a bit this problem has come up! It used to burn everything no problem at all.

Ya all my media is Memorex. What is CMC MAG? Why is it often of questionable quality?

If DMA is not enabled how do I enable it?

http://www.google.ie/search?q=nvidia+Ide+drivers+problems&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

Enough said on the first page really. They are the worst Ide drivers available for any platform.

galwaydude18

Jesus that's not good! I'l uninstall them and see does that help!

8T8

You can roll back the nForce 4 PATA Controller driver through the device manager to whats called the "Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" that should restore it to normal operation.

Memorex don't really make the media they buy, package and sell it from various manufacturers. The manufacturers have an unique ID code embedded in the DVD which the DVDRW drive reads and knows what kind of disc it is the CMC MAG code is a type of media that is very unreliable and one I would steer clear of (Memorex use CMC MAG a lot).

galwaydude18

Where will I find the nForce 4PATA Controller driver in device manager?

Sorry for the stupid questions. Did not know that about the Memorex dvds. I usually use Verbatium that I get from argos.

8T8

If you have installed the NVIDIA IDE drivers it should be listed under IDE/ATAPI controllers or under it's own heading of something like NVIDIA Storage controllers.

Expand the section and you should see it listed as nForce 4 PATA controller, bring up the properties go to the driver tab and select roll back driver from the list of drivers select "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" after its done reboot the computer when prompted.

galwaydude18

8T8 I'l give that a look this evening as well.

mizwizzy

hey galwaydude18

um.... i use Memorex dvds/cds and it works fine for me.... i used to get buffer underruns all the time....i too thought it was my hardware ....but it wasnt..i finally figured out i was burning at too high a speed.... and it just kept skipping.... so i just go for the basic speed now and everything works fine......no more coasters!

Anyway just thought that maybe this might work for you too....:)

8T8

They reason mizwizzy your burning at a lower speed is because the media is of poor quality and the combination of your DVDRW drives firmware means it cannot burn them at their intended speed.

His situation is different, a driver conflict though the media Memorex use is still of varying quality which you just confirmed.

mizwizzy

the media is fine... its just the dodgy cdrw i have..... its supposed to get to like 16x but it doesnt.....maybe only in read mode sure.... but when it comes to writing info it will only go so far then i get a coaster.....so i just go for the lowest option..

the cdrw drive becomes non responsive too at times.... which can be quite annoying....i dont use it anymore for burning.....live n learn.... its a phillips btw.... so quite surprising...

anyway just thought it might help galwaydude18 out.. sharing some info!

8T8

the media is fine... its just the dodgy cdrw i have..... its supposed to get to like 16x but it doesnt.....maybe only in read mode sure.... but when it comes to writing info it will only go so far then i get a coaster.....so i just go for the lowest option..

That's the point, its very likely nothings wrong with your drive the media isn't "fine" it is a lower grade media combined with the fact that your writer obviously isn't good at handling such media means it produces coasters at the speed it was intended to be written at.

If you change the media to say Plextor branded DVD or CD discs as they use Taiyo Yuden media (the best) then the discs would always burn at their maximum rated speed that your writer supports.

Well you could try updating the firmware of the drive if you know the model number to try and improve the burns but given the cost of DVD/RW drives is so cheap just buy a new one and problem solved.

mizwizzy

well ive used memorex sony and phillips discs..... all of them cant be wrong... infact they worked fine in a dvd/cdrw drive and on my other pc's cdrw drive... even if i had an ordinary data cd with some software on it the cdrw drive would become non responsive....i just know its limitations i guess...and thats why i choose the lower speed... its the only way it works for me...

8T8

You could have pointed that out in your original message

As it means the drive could be at fault in your case but that has nothing to do with the original posters problem as the issue persisted even after replacing the drive

greglo23

for burning dvds and iso's i use this http://www.imgburn.com/

to update your firmware to the latest region free firmware go here http://tdb.rpc1.org/

galwaydude18

well everyone I'm a happy camper! I rolled back the Nvidea Ide drivers as suggested and I can now say that I have now successfully burned 3 iso images onto dvd. Bloody damn drivers. I wont be installing them Nvidea ones again.

Thanks everyone for you help and suggestions.!

Cuddlesworth

:d