No burn dialog box anymore in nero 5.5.9.0

[snoutmeat]

Don't laugh at my old-school system, please!

Pioneer 104
Nero 5.5.9.0

Has been working like a champ for me for a couple of years now. Starting this weekend, however, it's been giving me problems. When I try to burn a disc in Nero, the window that normally pops up and shows me the size of the buffer and the progress of the burn just doesn't appear at all. It's like I'm not clicking on the "burn" button.

More info: This weekend, for the first time in my life, I had power calibration errors on my media. These are Ritek G04 media, and others from the spindle have never given me a problem. Regardless, I broke into a new pack of discs (also G04s), and had occasional problems with these as well. If I got a "calibration error", I just tried again with the same disc, and it usually worked the second time. This happened with about 1/5 of the discs I was burning in a marathon backup session. Then, on Sunday afternoon, I had a disc that gave me a power calibration error 3 or 4 times. I gave up and put a different disc in, but now it's having the problem described above (the disc won't start burning). Nero knows there's a disc in the drive -- it appears when I click on "disc info", it properly sets the write speed at 4x.

--Nothing in device manager looks unusual.

--I just burned a CD in the drive without any problems.

What do you think -- hardware or software? The drive has served me well, and if it really is dead, I got plenty of use out of it. I suppose I could move along from my 4x, -R only drive.

I'm just surprised that I'm not getting any error messages and that the CD-recording function is working fine. Has anyone else seen these symptoms? I don't have any other DVD burning software on the machine, so I think I'll throw in a new drive and see if it makes a difference. I'll be unhappy if I replace the drive and still have the same symptoms.

Advice? Experience?

Thanks!

[NormaJ]

I’ve googled, and everything points to:

1.- Low quality media, what doesn’t seem to be your case.
2.- The DVDR drive is dead.

You can try updating to a newer version of Nero, however, before buying a new one.

[ROF]

CD Burning and DVD Burning are two separate processes. It is quite common that a DVD burner that it is on it's last legs will continue to burn CDs but will fail trying to burn DVDs. That's what it sounds like to me. Fortunately, the price you paid for your DVD Burner is no longer valid. DVD Burners are in most cases cheaper than two cartons of cigarettes.

[snoutmeat]

Thanks for the replies. NormaJ, I've googled too -- the power calibration error points to cheap media or a dying drive, which is why I tried different media, but have you heard of the burn dialog box refusing to appear?

ROF -- less than 2 cartons of cigarettes? That's not saying much. With the taxes here on cigarettes, a quality OEM drive from Newegg is about the price of one carton. A new drive's also cheaper than a tankful of gas...

My old burner has served me well -- it's sad to see that it's died, but it's burned a couple thousand discs for me.

Thanks for the tips!

[ha13may]

Hi!

I used to have almost the same setup as yourself, Ritek G04 media, nero 5.5.9.0 and pioneer drive. In my case a 105 drive. I started getting exactly the same errors. I am quite sure there is nothing wrong with your drive. If you can get a small batch of TDKs and try burning. Your drive should be burning fine. The reason you are getting the errors is due to the Ritek Media. Even some of the ritek you have already burnt could be becoming corrupt.

This is just my experience. I do hope your drive is still okay and your burnt media is okay too but do try some good media in it.

[Richard_G]

Conversely, I had an almost identical setup, A05 drive, Ritek G04 media, Nero 5.5.10.x and suffered the same problem. Cleaning the lens in the drive made it work for a bit longer but changing media didn't. I think yours has gone the same way as mine (and is now used just for burning CDs in my daughters computer).

[snoutmeat]

Oops -- just checked, and mine's an A05 as well (not an A04), so it sounds like I'm in good company. To test ha13may's hypothesis, I have some Fuji-branded Taiyo Yuden discs, and I'm getting the same symptoms (no burn dialog box popping up). I'd be surprised if the Riteks were causing problems; they seem to be highly-regarded media, and I haven't heard of anything like this happening; do you have any other examples of this happening -- articles or other threads?

[VegasBud]

If you're clicking on an enabled command button (or menu item) and a dialog box doesn't pop up (but used to), that would be the software. If it was the burner or the media, the dialog box would still pop up but you would also get an error message. Did you try re-installing Nero? That just may fix your problem, and it doesn't cost anything to try.