DVD burner won't finish burn

[JDShaffer]

I have a strrange problem I haven't been able to solve myself. My main computer system has burned DVD's fine for years but recently on my main computer when I burn a DVD it burns to about 80% done then the burn speed drops to 0 and the burn program eventually gives any error message. I have 3 different burners I have tried all three in the main system and they all do the same thing in my main system, but I have also tried all 3 in my backup system and they all burned great in that system. I also tried two different kinds of media, with the same results. I also tried 3 different burn programs, also with the same results. I then moved the burner from the master on the second IDE port to the slave on the first IDE port, no change. Lastly I did a repair install of XP which gave my no change. I don't know what else to try, any ideas?
Thanks.

[Rich86]

Are all these failed burns coming from the same source file/files/image per chance?
Have you installed any new software on the system that may be launching itself and interrupting your burn?

[JDShaffer]

I have tried several different image files and to be sure I was trying the same thing I copied the image files to a USB hard drive and burned them on my backup system from the USB drive, which gave good burns.
I can't think of any programs I have installed in the past couple weeks but it is possable I have installed something I'm not remembering right away.

[classfour]

media?

[t0nee1]

What proggy's are you using to burn on both your main and backup systems?what OS on systems? post burn logs...... maybe do a system restore on main sys. to an earlier time when it worked properly,see if that helps....

[JDShaffer]

Media is Ritek and TY.
Operating System is XP Pro.
Burn Programs are ImgBurn, Roxio, and DVD Decrypter.

A system restore might be a good idea, I had forgotten about that.

I am at work so I don't have any log files I can post right now.

Thanks.

[pwil30]

Have you tried making sure DMA is enabled? I just fixed my burner problem that way (my problem was the same as yours, except that it stopped at about 10%). To check DMA:

Go to Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager>IDE/ATAPI controllers.

Right click on the Primary or Secondary IDE channel, whichever has the DVD burner on it (usually secondary), click Properties.

Go to advanced settings, there it will have dropdown menus for device 0(0) or 1(1). If your DVD burner is primary, it will be device 0, secondary will be 1. Check to see if "DMA if available" is selected in the dropdown menu. If not, select it and reboot.

After reboot, go back to same place and see if the current transfer mode says PIO or DMA. If it still says PIO, you'll need to do some more work.

Reboot your PC and go into BIOS as soon as it restarts (usually F2 key). Find in there drive configurations or something similar, and go to where you should have your DVD writer (ex. Secondary IDE slave drive). It should say CD-ROM, even if it is a DVD burner. If it says "none", then change it to "unknown device". Even though it says it is unknown at this point, BIOS will recognize the drive once you boot up.

Exit out of BIOS (don't forget to save the changes). Once you have started up, go back to the device manager and find your DVD writer. It should now show that the DMA is enabled.


Hope that works. It did for me, although my writer was brand new. Maybe your system just had a little shakeup or something, needs some reconfiguring. Anyway, this is worth a try.