DVD Burner going nuts?

[Immortal25]

Hey ppls....I've never had a spoilt dvd burner before...so currently am baffled by this prob. I've got this Pioneer burner for 2 years plus now. Recently, almost all burnt dvdrw have problems during the burning process. I use Nero btw. They come out illegal disc when I try to rewrite the disc and burn other stuff. At times it just doesn't burn properly and the movies don't play out or freeze at some point. I'm tempted to think it's the media discs' fault but there's some evidence against it. First I've got a new disc and it happened after just one burn. Second, it's all happening to 2 discs currently so I think that's too much of a coincidence. Can someone just confirm if this is a dvd burner showing signs of dying?
I have another burner which is actually my notebook and I can't quite TRY burning using that burner (to troubleshoot out whether the burner is the problem) as those disc with the "illegal disc" problem can't be erased using the notebook burner. Really stumped here...

[redwudz]

It's not so easy to 'convict' the burner outright. It could still be the DVD media, or a slight chance that it could be the burning software. You can eliminate two possibilities by trying regular (Not RW) media of a good quality. I would try Verbatim. And use ImgBurn to burn with.

But 'Illegal disc' is most often a media problem.

If no improvement with the above changes and your burner is two + years old, probably a good time to replace it, considering the current price of drives. I'm guessing this is also a internal burner. External burners have different causes and problems.

[Immortal25]

Yes it is an internal burner. I use Verbatim discs as well.
Well truth be told the discs themselves are pretty old, being used many times. They are at least a year old now with constant burning at least once a week, or almost. I'm hoping it's disc problem but really don't understand why it happened with that new Imation disc.
Still, I'll change the burning software from Nero to others and see what happens. But are there no signs to pinpoint that the burner is spoilt outright?

[filmboss80]

Process of elimination: Rule out other things before tossing out the burner. Two more likely problems (as mentioned already): The DVD-RW media and (more likely) Nero.

Don't just try any burning software. ImgBurn is the most reliable of all burning software -- and it's free!

Try different discs (good ones, like Taiyo Yuden or newer Verbatims) and try ImgBurn. If those don't work, you can start looking at your burner itself.