Burning problems.

[Ex Inferis]

Hi all,

Hope I'm posting in the right section; there are so many! Also, I have searched for an apropriate answer to my question, but can't seem to find anything specific. Sorry if this has been asked ad-infinitum!

Right, to the point: I've been burning quite a few VCD's lately with Nero 6 (sorry, can't provide the exact version number, as I no longer have N6 on my machine.). Everything was going swimmingly until about a week ago when I managed to burn my first coaster. I tried burning a backup music CD with WMP, but it failed about 90% through. I then tried the same compilation in Nero and same results; yet another coaster!

I had an old data CD from a few years ago which I managed to unlock with ISObuster (the disk had been unreadable, so welcome program there!). I noticed that it had a folder containing Roxio Easy CD Creator, which - acording to these forums - is not compatable with Nero. With this in mind I removed it, hoping that this would solve my Nero problem. Alas, my collection of coasters increased by 1...

I then tried a restore of my system to a date when everything was burning fine, but again more coasters.

Finally, I removed Nero 6 and re-installed Nero 5.5, hoping this would work. I was happy when it burned 2 VCD's (at 4x), but this didn't last long. One more for under the cup-a-tea!

I've tried removing any junk files, run a virus scan (Norton), run Ad scans, defragmented my HD all to no avail.

So, I've now come to my wits end. I'm starting to think it's something to do with my drive...

Specs are:

Samsung Q10 Laptop, with Toshiba SD-R2102 Slimline CD/DVD drive
Windows XP SP1
256MB Memory (although, it says 91.44 available, if that means anything to anyone?)
20GB HD (with about 6GB free space)
Intel Pentium III

I've most likely forgotten something, so apologies if this is slightly incomplete information.

Any suggestions would be greatfully received!

[ricky1756]

what error message do you get?

[redwudz]

Is your DVD drive external? If it is and using the USB interface, you might see what else is using USB. USB is sensitive to other devices, such as keyboards and mouse's. If this is your setup, you should check for the latest drivers for your drive. Interesting that you only have 91M available. Makes me wonder what is sucking up the rest of your memory. Usually I have seen this with video cards grabbing extra memory. With a laptop, I wonder where it is going? If you have a laptop like mine, you might want to save all your files and do a reinstall of your OS with the disks included with the laptop. Easy cure for a lot of problems.

[Ex Inferis]

Hi guys, thanks for your replies.

@ ricky1756: I get no error messages; it simply stops burning. The light on my drive stops flashing and the disk stops spining. Nero hangs up too. It will let me click on cancel burn (or, whatever) but the program won't shut down. Also seems to hang up the rest of my system. This was with N6. As I said, I've reinstalled N5.5. This was slightly different when the burn went wrong. It got to 34% and then just hung there. The light on my drive was continualy on, and the disc was spining, but nothing else was happening!

@ redwudz: My dvd drive is not external; it's located in my docking station.

Perhaps the problem is with my lack of memory? If I were to use Hijackthis and post the report here, would anyone be able to maybe point out what's hoging my memory? I really can't make head nor tail of the report!

I really, really don't want to be re-installing my OS again; I've had to do it several times over the last couple of months as I cought a virus. In honesty, I've found that having to keep formating and reinstalling XP has just made things worse...

[Ex Inferis]

Anyone have anymore suggestions, perhaps?

[BountyHunter]

I once ran into a simular problem. Everything working fine, then coaster after coaster. After troubleshooting for a while, I realized the problems started after I bought a new 50 pack of CD-Rs. Apparently my CD burner didn't like Memorex brand of CDs, switched to TDK and didn't have any more problems.

[Ex Inferis]

I did think of that, but I've been using the same Philips ones for ages now. Also tried Sony and Samsung cdrw's. Same thing.