DVD playback speed problem

[LWC]

Hi,

My DVD burner on my PC is capable of burning up to 16x and I have a pretty fast computer. I use ImgBurn to build ISO images and burn them to disc. Just to be safe I set the max burn speed to 8x. Burning and playback always worked perfectly before.

But lately, there's been a strange problem. The burning speed has decreased to no more than 1x, and DVDs that were burned since the problem began play back at inconsistent speeds both on the PC and on a DVD player.

On the PC, the playback would go at normal speed sometimes, but other times it would automatically play back at very fast speeds. No matter what playback speed I adjust it to on the PC playback softwares (KMPplayer and Windows Player), it has no effect.

When I try the discs on the standalone player, the playback is choppy and freezes at intermittent spots.

I am not sure if Spybot is to be blamed? Since installing it, my PC has run slower.

What may the problem be, and what diagnostic tools can I use to find the root of the problem?

Thank you.

[jman98]

It's highly unlikely to be Spybot, assuming that you have installed THE Spybot Search & Destroy program and not some soundalike that has taken over your PC. The official website is here:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

It could be a lot of things. Your burner could be going bad. Your burner might be PIO mode as Windows has a "feature" where this can be done without your knowledge to fix "problems" that aren't really problems. Yea Microsoft. What exactly do you mean that the speed is no more than 1x?
Do you mean you can set it higher, but the reported speed on the GUI is always around 1x? Set it to a value greater than 1x but NOT "Max", such as 4x. Does ImgBurn report burning at 1x speed here?

You could be using bad media. In the USA, the ONLY consistently reliable media is Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden (you will have to order those online). That is it.

My suggestion would be to use better media at first. You could deinstall Spybot and see if that helps, but that's unlikely. You could try another burner.

[LWC]

I currently have the Imgburn max burn speed set to 8x, but during the actual burning, the speed Imgburn uses is less than 1. I am using the same dvd discs that I was using before.

Would unstalling the dvd rom hardware and reinstall help?

[Bjs]

This problem normally occurs when an unbalanced disc is played / ripped

Go to control panel > system > hardware > device manager

Depending on your burners interface ... either IDE ATA/ATAPI, SATA, SCSI

Click the + on IDE ATA / ATAPI controllers
Uninstall last to first, and finally remove > IDE ATA / ATAPI controllers

Same if device is SATA or SCSI

Reboot system

Come back to device manager after system has reinstalled device drivers and go back to these controllers

Go to properties for each then > advanced settings tab > device should now be back in DMA mode

If DMA settings are now correct but burn speed has not improve, then

1: Change the data cable (they can fail slowly or not be fitted correctly)
2: Try different brand of media
3: TTUD ... Time to upgrade device