DVD Burning taking a long time.

[tonemgub]

I am not sure if I have come to the right place but I am hoping someone might have an answer to my problem.
I have the following setup:
2000 XP Athlon, 768MB DDR Ram, 8X DVD Burner, DVD Rom, 80 GB Hardrive, 20 GB Hardrive. Running Windows XP Pro.
On first installing Windows XP Pro I did not have this problem and all was working well. When I run Nero to burn a DVD the memory buffer runs wildly up and down and this seems to pause the burning process (The screen appears to jump and then reset itself). At the moment when I go to burn a DVD it is taking upto 30 minutes and seems very processor intensive. I know that before this problem occured I could burn a full DVD at 4x in 13 minutes approx ( the memory buffer would stay constant and the screen would not jump), now it is taking upto 30 minutes. I have installed Roxio Media 7.5 and Alcohol and all programs take the same length of time. With Alcohol the processor percentage starts off at a reasonable 5 to 10 % but then increases dramatically to 70 to 80%. The only program running in the background is an anti virus scanner and the normal windows services. I havent a clue what could be causing this as like I have said all was ok when I first installed windows XP and then suddendly everything has changed.
Has anybody any suggestions?

[redwudz]

First check to see if your burner is stuck in PIO mode instead of DMA. That will slow burning greatly.

It really sounds like the burning program is using extra HD space to buffer. If your HD free space is small or your HD is badly fragmented, that will slow it down.

You may also have some interference from software programs running. Other burning programs, especially. Check the Task Manager to see what else may be running during burns. Even though no programs are showing, there may be some processes that are hogging memory.

If you are using DVDShrink to backup DVDs, try DVDDecrypter to ISO burn the files. Uses less resources.

[budz]

check to see that your dvd burner is DMA ENABLED. use the link below:

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7625

if you have problems ENABLING DMA in XP use this link below:

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=6645

[tonemgub]

Hi, many thanks for the replies. I checked the DMA mode of the DVD burner and it was in PIO mode so I changed it. I havent as of yet burnt a DVD but I will let you know. I did do a virus scan and a spyware scan using Panda Titanium and it picked up a few things but nothing that was running in the background.
Thanks again.

Chris

[redwudz]

It sounds like the burner being in PIO mode was your problem. Windows OS will automatically change the mode to PIO if it thinks there was a problem. Usually a read/write error.

Unfortunately it won't change it back automatically. Just a flaw in the OS that I really wish they would fix. It would be nice for it to reset to DMA on booting. PIO/DMA mode is the first thing to check if your burner or DVD ROM slows down.