How do I find out which disks my PC will accept?

[aelfheah]

Hi

Before I end up with a load of useless Coffee cup mats, is there a simple way to see which type of disks will be accepted by my computer driver? I have an older computer (mean to treat myself to a laptop)

I used Windows + Pause/Break, but no disk type information I can see there?

Thanks

[Baldrick]

Try Nero InfoTool, download from http://www.nero.com/enu/support-nero8-tools-utilities.html

[aelfheah]

Thanks Baldrick, sounds like a cunning plan!

[aelfheah]

Worked great, but despite it saying that my PC would read & write dvd-R disks, they are burning avi files to them as coffee mats?

Do I have to author the file first, and then burn?

[Baldrick]

If you would like a standard dvd-video use all-in-one dvd converters https://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/all-in-one-dvd-converters that converts and author.

If you are making data dvds use any dvd writer app.

[jman98]

Worked great, but despite it saying that my PC would read & write dvd-R disks, they are burning avi files to them as coffee mats?

Do I have to author the file first, and then burn?

Your first statement is not a question. But I'll give you grammatical credit for not saying "mat's" and "disk's" at least.

You don't HAVE to author them. They could be failing because you are using a bad burning program, not following the correct steps to burn a data disc, using low quality media, or some combo of the above. I'd recommend you stick with Verbatim (everything but their Life series) and Taiyo Yuden (have to buy online) brand discs for best results. We recommend the use of ImgBurn which is free and is a very reliable burning program. If you want to author your AVI files to DVD format, Baldrick's suggestion is where to start. If you want to try to salvage your remaining discs, burn them with ImgBurn and use a lower speed. Do not attempt to burn above 4x speed. If that fails to solve your problem, one final thing you can try is you can look for a firmware update for your burner and install that. Some lower quality discs require firmware updates to burn correctly. If that fails too, you'll have to buy better discs.

[Nelson37]

What method are you using to determine whether the disks work or not?

With an older PC and drive, there is only one way to determine brand of disks which will work. Buy some, test, if failure, buy some different ones. After 2 or 3 failures, get a new drive.


If you are testing in a standalone DVD player and NOT the PC drive, that's where your problem lies. This would not test the burn, but the authoring step.

[aelfheah]

Thanks fellas for your good advice! It's been a while since I burned disks (Maxell dvd-R in this case to burn avi files to disk anyway). I normally use DVD+RW

A friend once installed a copy version of DVDFlick, which of course may not update! My PC is also quite old (Pentium4 Compaq using XP/Firefox with 1gb Ram and plenty external HD) but kept clean and up to date.
Nero (latest, I thought -again, a 'copy' version which may not update?) seems to egg-time when I try to add files, but has done wonders otherwise.

I shall download the program you stated, to burn from now on?

Cheers guys.

[aelfheah]

jman98, I presume that by 'remaining disks' I have to scrap the already 'burnt' ones now (two of)?

I thought Maxell disks were good, but will try Verbatim and also ImgBurn which you proposed.

Shall I delete the DVDFlick program, or try to update the Nero one?

Thanks again for your patience fellas!