Please tell me this isn't a bad thing!!

[gambit32]

Last night I was burning a SxVCD(with menus I might add)using Nero and I got this message "Power calibration error" and then I got the unsuccesful burn message. So I tried to reburn immediately and it worked. After the the successful reburn, I haven't been able to burn. I tried three times before leaving the house and no luck. I have a cheap Aopen burner. I can burn up to 12x. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this or am I now in the market for a new burner?

[hitechjunkie]

what else you got inside your PC drawing power? is your PC on an UPS?

[gambit32]

I'm not sure what you mean by "UPS?" My setup is this:
700mhz Duron
256 mg RAM
20 gig HD (7200rpm)
40 gig HD (5400rpm)
Aopen CD-burner
Aopen DVD-rom
Cybermail capture card
printer, scanner.
That's all I have on my machine. When I burn, normally I'm able to surf the net w/out problems. When I got this problem I made sure that I wasn't doing anything else. I made sure that this was the first application that I ran. Could this have something to do with a program running in the background sucking up my RAM?

[hitechjunkie]

no, not ram related. i'm thinkin' more along the lines of the output power of your burners laser, which can be affected by the power supply on the burner (going bad), the power supply in your PCs case (too many devices drawing power and maxing it out) or just the laser going bad.

also, if the PC is getting its AC power from a less than reliable source, it could affect the PCs power supply and everything drawing power from it. most UPS (battery backup) units compensate for brown outs and such.

[gambit32]

Okay, I think I understand...so is there a fix for this?

[hitechjunkie]

not if it's h/w going bad (power supply, laser, etc)...

[gambit32]

In other words, I'm in the market for a new CD-burner?...Damn I was hoping to avoid that.

[gambit32]

Get this...I can burn succesfully at 4x!? Weird...

[[Martyr]]

I had exactly the same problem, I have an creative blaster 32x12x10, It did the first few burns extremely well, then this power calibration error started to shit me, but I could burn at 8x, This probably means its not really an hardware error. So I tried uninstalling the actual drive from the device manager, then reboot. This fixed the problem for me...

[tacosalad]

Is it possible "power calibration" is just another name for thermal calibration?

Some hard drives occasionally perform thermal calibration to compensate for the effect heat has on the head position. Data transfer stops momentarily while the drive aligns its heads with special servo-calibration tracks. A sudden burst of drive activity can raise its temperature, so thermal calibration is particularly likely to interrupt (and hence ruin) sustained AV operations like video capture, audio capture, and CD recording.

Some hard drives are specifically "AV rated" to indicate that they avoid this problem. The required calibration occurs continually, although I can't say by what means.

This doesn't quite fit the term "power calibration", but the symptoms fit perfectly. Thermal calibration is fairly brief, so it wouldn't ruin a burn at a lower speed--and you said 8x worked okay.

Just a thought.

[hitechjunkie]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-07-20 17:26:52, gambit32 wrote:
Get this...I can burn succesfully at 4x!? Weird...

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

not really! still an indication that the there is something "wrong" with the burners laser (dirty lens, going bad).

here's a PC Mag explanation of power calibration

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>IN A CD-R SYSTEM THE POWER level of the writing laser beam should be carefully chosen to produce optimum results. As CD-R media vary considerably from brand to brand, drive manufacturers may optimise the design of their drives for particular media. In addition, there is production variation within each brand of media. To cope with this there is a calibration area provided on each disc and in theory, drives can fine-tune the write power setting for each disc. While many earlier CD-R drives did not implement this feature all the CD-RW drives in this feature do have Optical Power Calibration (OPC). </BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

[hitechjunkie]

as a last resort, you could also try cleaning your burner...

[Betamax]

I think you got it all wrong (a bit)

Although I've got an Athlon 1.2Gz, 256Mb ram and disks running at 7200rpm-ATA100, my maximum speed of writing (S)VCD's is 12xSpeed (it normally should write at 16xSpeed).

The problem is the speed of the disks in conjunction of the system. Also the amount of buffer-cache in the CDWriter itself is important (although I have 8Mb there).

Keep in mind, if you're writing VCD's the CD has to write multiple tracks. This makes it run slower a bit. When writing only 1 track, all goes a bit faster (even if you've selected DAO).

[hitechjunkie]

might also wanna try another burning program...

[ugotnext]

I have a cretive labs 8-4-32 burner. And I get this error often. I usual happens when I try to burn CDs back to back. Basically the firs CD burns ok, when I try to burn the second CD I get the error you mentions. Fortunately it does not make the CD a coaster. I cancel out all of the failure screens and retry the burn. It usually works on the second try. This has happened to me since I first installed the burner, and since I got a great deal on the burner I didn't really worry about it. FYI I'm using Nero 5.5, but it also happend with Nero 5.0

[rayjr13]

I had the same as ugotnext but on Rox EZCD5plat closing out and sometimes a shutdown and reboot helped plus I had to reboot because it wouldn't give me my cd back. The melting light stayed on and therefore wouldn't eject. But the CD stayed blank.

[gambit32]

I'm not alone! I'm happy to report that my burner has been burning fine lately. I looked at cleaning my burner from the link hitechjunkie gave, but it looks to risky. At the price I paid for it ($92), I can afford to buy a new one. I also found that when I switch media, it doesn't really happen. I mostly get the errors when I use generic discs and burn at 12x. I can burn on the generic discs at 4x though. When I use my TDK discs I can burn at 12x. I'm sort of disappointed because I just bought a 200 pack of generics and my Apex doesn't mind them. It sucks waiting 15 minutes for a disc to burn....

[khai]

Well, this is totally off topic but that post by rayjr reminded me of something.

To all you guys with Pioneer DVD-ROM slot drives. Sometimes when I press eject, my CD or DVD won't come out.. I have to goto to my computer, right click on the drive, and select Eject. Does this ever happen to you?

[rayjr13]

That's one thing I hate man, when my computer doesn't so what I tell it to. Frustrates me... I hate when thing I own act like I'm not in charge. Man if my car ever did that would piss me the hell off. I turn the wheel and it decides it doesn't feel like turning right. Man I would pull over and kick the s*** outta my car. I want to do the same thing wit my computer when It won't eject my discs............ummmm I thought I'd just share my frustration with u all