Problem Burning DVD-R with Nero 5.5.x.x. and Windows 2000/XP

wiespino · Member Joined: 27 Aug 2002 Location: New York, USA

Hello guys! Please help me if possible with information.
First of all I not an expert in copying DVD's but I'm not a newbie either. I've ripped and burned approx. 100 Movies so far. I have a Pioneer DVR A04 drive and I usually burn my DVD's with Nero. Lately I had 3 problems: Nero failed to burn the 2 discs of the movie Gosford Park (I split the movie with Ifoedit) and also failed to burn second disk of "Escaflowne" (Japanese animation). I’ve only split these movies without ReMpeg-ing or affecting quality otherwise. For the first movie. I've created with Nero (like in all cases) a DVD UDF/ISO compilation with basic ISO Levels, without Joliet or other relaxations of the ISO restrictions. Nero stopped writing to DVD around 99%. No error message, and the clock was still counting the time. I left it overnight and in the morning was still at 99% after 6 hours. When I pressed Cancel, it asked me if I want to cancel the burning process, from which I assume the program was not completely frozen. I cancelled but then froze. The DVD-R unit tray was not responding to the eject button (the led was off) and even the OS refused to Shutdown. I had to use the reset button. I had this problem in Windows 2000. I switched to Windows XP (I have dual boot between 2000 and XP) and I installed Nero 5.5.9.6. I tried to burn again the disc with the problem (Was the first disc from Gosford Park) but this time I did also the "Simulation". It worked but the second disc had the same problem even with the different operating system and fresh installation of Nero. Since then I burned cca 10 other DVD's without any problem. Yesterday I tried to burn second disc of the other movie: "Escaflowne", and Nero stopped writing again but at 65% this time. I got no error message or other sign of error and all the other symptoms were there, including freezing Windows XP this time. Any idea what is the problem ??? The media is the same I used for my other approx. 150 successfully burned DVD's. Is something wrong with my DVD burner ???? If yes, why is this problem so random and I don't have it with every DVD I burn or at lest more often. Could be a driver problem ? Usually I keep my system up to date and I've read in the forum about some issues with Windows 2000 SP3, Windows XP and Windows Media Player. I am not 100% sure if I've already installed Windows 2000 SP3 before having this problems but now I have this patch installed and this could be a cause. Any idea you could give me will be greatly appreciated. I am afraid of a hardware failure of some sort but I don't think I have enough reasons to jump to this conclusion and send the Pioneer A04 for repair.

Please help!!!!!!!!
P.S.: Which is the best program for burning DVD's that are DVD Video compliant ??? I've tried Nero and RecordNOW Max but both seem to have issues !
Thank you.