Expert Help Needed: System has become unstable

[Myth(GJ)]

OK, I really do not know what the problem is here so I need advice from anyone that might have experienced similar problems.

I have been able to burn DVDR for over five months now without problems. Then for some reason it all went wrong. I'm using the same media as before and have even bought some more expensive disks. When I burn now with Nero, I still get a successful burn but when I rip the disk back to check it, it has errors. I have even bought a new burner and installed it today. Same problem.

I'm convinced it is not the media as I have burned over 200 successful disks that rip back without error.
I sent the burner to the supplier but they sent it back with successfully burnt disks - I checked them and they are correct.
I have reformatted and installed my operating system again. Still no success.

My operating system is on one hard-disk and I use a seperate hard-disk for ripping to, and burning from. I have just reformatted this as well.

Devices are all on DMA.

Any advice as to what else might be wrong would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Myth.

[lechtin]

Your supplier might have used a different burning software. Have you updated Nero lately? You might want to try something else, like RecordNow Max.

I recently had a similar problem in that I burned data to a DVD but some files I could not copy back to my hard drive. It turned out that my media had some errors and using another media fixed this. I used CDCheck to verify the integrity of the files on the DVD and also to compare to the originals on the hard disk. That might help you to diagnose the problem
(CDCheck is freeware, at http://fusion.zejn.si/)

[Gazorgan]

The only way to be sure you are using "the same media" is to take the disk off the same spindle. Otherwise, it could be completely different.....just look at the DVDR threads about bad media.

I personally had to roll back to an older version of nero when my same-old/same-old method started failing. I'd investigate down this path, smells like a Nero update gone bad ( was it 5.10.x that was such a mess?, went back to 5.9.x???)

Your laser could be failing. That's a toughy to diagnose. It may work when cold, and at 1x. The warranty work was probably done with the drive laying on a bench.

[Myth(GJ)]

Thanks for the quick replies guys.

I have reinstalled Nero 5.5.9.0, this is what I was using when things were going fine and I did update it to version 5.5.10.35 but only after the disk failures.

I really don't think its the media as the problems started on disk 21 of a 25 disk batch and I have eight other batches of disks here and I've tried one from each with no success.

The burner could be at fault but I went and bought another one on sale or return and it is having the same problem.

There do not appear to be any problems when burning is being carried out. I have ran the performance monitor in the background and the CPU activity stays between 0-3% whilst burning. I use DVDDecryptor to check the burns in my DVDROM and this is when the failure is detected. The DVDROM can still read my older RIPS so I'm sure it is not at fault.

I'll try another piece of burning software - any recommendations?

Then, I going to remove the hard-disk with the operating system on it and install the OS to the other hard-disk. Then I'm only going to install NERO 5.5.9.0 and DVDDECRYPTOR.

I am going to put the burner on Primary IDE as the master, and the Hard disk and DVDROM on the secondary with DVDROM as master and hard-disk as slave. Does this sound correct?

I have a Pioneer A05 - what is recommended firmware for burning to Datawrite Red? (Or any other media for that matter).

The firmware in the NEW Pioneer A05 is 1.30. I think the firmware in my own A05 is 1.33 or someting

Anyway, if anyone has any other suggestions - please let me know.

Thanks,
Myth.