Strange Toast-related Problem

[danielmak]

I have an iMac Intel that is about 5 months old. I'm running 10.5.8 and burning with Toast 10.0.2 on an external Pioneer 112D. In the past few days I have been running into a weird-Toast related problem when copying some DVD-Rs of soccer matches. Toast will tell me that there is an error with the DVD and that it can fix the problem but might take a long time. I select not to fix the error. I get the spinning color circle and have to force quit Toast. I turn off the Pioneer since it won't let me eject until I turn it off and back on. I put the DVD back in the Pioneer because when this problem has occurred in the past with specific DVDs that Toast said had problems, I could extract with MTR, fix bad sectors in MyDVDEdit, and just burn with Toast in UDF mode. But now when I re-insert the DVD it won't mount on the desktop. I can eject by pressing the eject button on the front of the external Pioneer. I put the DVD in the Hl-dt-st built in drive on my iMac, and again the DVD does not mount. In this case the DVD won't eject either. So I restart the computer and get the spinning wheel of death and then unplug the computer. I restart the computer and hold down the eject button while the computer reboots and the DVD spits out.

This is a DVD that I have been able to copy before. But maybe the DVD went bad. Here is the strange part. When I put another DVD in both drives after this happened, both drives treat that second DVD as if it is bad too, which I know is not the case. I restart the computer again and insert that 2nd DVD in the Pioneer and it mounts.

I had the same problem today with a different DVD but this time did not mess around with the built in drive and decided to restart the computer. Again, spinning wheel of death and I unplugged the computer. So clearly there is something happening when Toast freezes up and I need to force quit that is messing up preferences or something like that (I am thinking back to my Performa days when I would hold down some buttons during rebooting to clear out the preferences).

My question is this: What can I do to clear out Toast's preferences? Or what is Toast doing here relative to my overall computer that is messing with the DVD drives and what can I do to fix the problem?

I hope that all makes sense. If not, I can try to clarify.

EDIT: I installed the Toast 10.0.3 update because Toast started crashing on me after I posted this message. Toast still crashes with the update (burning UDF mode on either the Pioneer or the internal drive).

[rumplestiltskin]

Firstly, let's leave Toast out of the mix. Boot cold (not a restart). When you reach the Finder, put the DVD into the internal optical drive. Does it mount?

If so, launch Disk Utility. Select the volume in the list on the left (not the physical drive but the volume). Select "New image from {volume name}" and save the image as a "master" with whatever name you want. When the save is done, select the image in the list (it will be on the bottom of the left list), then click "burn" from the Disk Utility toolbar. Let it burn & verify.

It the above instructions worked for you, the problem is not your hardware. I'm also assuming you're using quality DVD-R media. Verbatim is recommended by Apple (and they're right, use only Verbatim).

Let us know what happened. We'll proceed from there.

[danielmak]

Thanks, I'll give this a try, but just to provide a slight update before I do that (and only because I have a server running right now so I can't shutdown yet). That original DVD worked with MTR in terms of file extraction. But when I went to burn the VIDEO_TS, Toast crashed (same result with both drives). I use a combination of Verbatim, Sony, and TDK. Currently I have TDK, but I am down to the bottom of the spindle and have had no problems up until now with either drive and this media (including this batch). I did not uninstall Toast when I upgraded to 10.0.3 (which seems to be a drag to the trash since there is not an uninstall option on the Toast 10 DVD); rather, I just dragged and dropped the folder from the updater into my applications folder and selected replace.

Anyway, I'll report back when I can reboot tomorrow (or later today, I should say).

[rumplestiltskin]

Based upon your last post, I'll have to ask whether you have any third-party hacks in your system including any audio or video codecs that didn't come with Leopard (or Toast).

Your update technique with Toast was fine.

By the way: I also found major instability with Toast after one of the last Leopard updates (10.5.8 IIRC). The only thing that resolved it was a re-install of the 10.5.8 combo updater followed by a new install of Toast followed by the 10.0.3 Toast update.

[danielmak]

Thanks for the tip about testing with Disk Utility. That worked fine with the TDK, so it's not the media (which again had been fine so far) and it's not the hardware.

Based upon your last post, I'll have to ask whether you have any third-party hacks in your system including any audio or video codecs that didn't come with Leopard (or Toast).

Your update technique with Toast was fine.

By the way: I also found major instability with Toast after one of the last Leopard updates (10.5.8 IIRC). The only thing that resolved it was a re-install of the 10.5.8 combo updater followed by a new install of Toast followed by the 10.0.3 Toast update.

In terms of general background, and I assume your comment about third-party hacks may or may not relate to my note about running a server. I had been running my CrushFTP server (someone was uploading .rar files) and downloading using Cyberduck. But neither of these programs were updated that would cause Toast to crash, and nothing coming in or going out would create a problem for Toast. Additionally, I haven't updated any other types of software on the computer immediately prior to this problem starting. It really is a case of Toast freezing up when I tried to copy a DVD-R and since then has acted screwy.

With all of that said, I figured I would test Toast again post-Disk Utility test and the cold restart and Toast is working now. I do not have CrushFTP or Cyberduck running right now, so I will test again after this DVD finishes with those two programs open. If I run into a problem, I will write back and ask advice about how to re-insteall the 10.5.8 combo updater. Thanks again for taking the time to help me with this.

EDIT: Well, I jumped the gun. First DVD burned fine. I quit Toast, reopened Toast to burn a different DVD (again UDF), and Toast quit right as the window started to shrink to start burning. The only other program open at the time was Firefox.

[danielmak]

Rather than keep adding edits to my previous post, I will just say that I followed the advice re-install the 10.5.8 combo update and then the 10.0.3 Toast update. Everything is now running smoothly now, so there must have been some weird quirk, although I have no idea what it would be since I had not updated any software or added any new software between my last few good burns and this problem. Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to talk me through this. Hopefully if others run into a similar problem, they can follow the steps listed in the thread.

[rumplestiltskin]

Glad it's all working for you now.