burning dvds with vista

[tre2002]

I'm having problems succesfully burning dvds with both nero 7 and imgburn. I
am getting an error every time and just wasting blank dvds, can anyone help?

[Richard XXII]

Have you tried burning WITHOUT those programs btw?
I thought this ability was native to vista. (dvd writing)

[Adam Albright]

So called "burning" DVD's is far from an exact science.

Did you have any trouble doing the same thing in XP?

What exactly kind of error message are you getting and what is
throwing the error message? Windows itself, the burning application
you're using or the actual DVD burner during the write process?

Does it happen at roughly the same place?

Have your tried a different brand of blank media?

How new is your DVD burner and does it have underrun protection?

What exactly happens when you try to burn a DVD? If the DVD burner
light stays on and never goes off or just keeps flashing and you have
trouble ejecting the disc that points to one kind of problem. If you
DVD burner starts but fails early on at 3-6% or so that usually means
it had trouble doing what's called the lead-in. If if goes for awhile
then stops, that often is just bad media. If it almost finishes that's
a lead-out problem.

Look closely at the bottom side of one of your failed DVD's. Is it
"burning" any tracks at all (you'll see a difference compared to a
blank) or not?

Need more input.

[tre2002]

the error message usually occurs at the end of the burning process (on the
lead-out). but burning with nero, the error occurs at the lead-in. my dvd
burner is only 2 weeks old, and since i've had it i've been having several
problems with this. I never had this problem with xp. I even tried
uninstalling and reinstalling the driver for the dvd-rom and using different
blank media. I contacted toshiba support and they just said to send it in so
they can check it out. Very frustrating!

"

[Wylee]

I had a similar problem that drove me crazy for a week and a half. I finally
solved the problem this way (maybe it will work for you too!):

I had a two-pin cable connected to the second IDE connector, in hole 13 and
the hole directly below. Anyway, this cable gave some sort of feedback to the
digital display on the front of the computer, basically showed when the DVD
was being used. Once I disconnected this cable (no longer in use), the DVD
began to burn properly -- no more errors. This was on Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

Hope this helps you too!

[Zim Babwe]

You said you never had this problem with XP, but stated that your DVD burner
is 2 weeks old. Could be that the media isn't compatable with the new
burner/Vista combination. I had the same issue when I put Vista on my PC.

Try a brand name DVD/RW to check compatibility, so if it doesn't work, your
DVD doesn't become a coaster. Also, if you use Nero 7, make sure you
download the latest updates from Nero.

Hope that helps

[wes]

Now you sound like the man i need to be speaking to, i have had a catalogue
of problems with vista, most i have got over. Nero which is apparantly
compattible with vista has caused me all sorts of problems so i got rid of
it, now im wondering if when i uninstalled it has it taken something from my
burner program. when i use media player 11 or vistas dvd maker it gets to
99.9% then says "cannot create the dvd. the dvd could not be burned because
an error has occured. try using another blank disc and make sure ur dvd
burner is working properly. learn more about this problem..." so i click on
learn more and all it says is try turning the drive speed to medium or low, i
have tried it on both settings with no joy. also i havre tried using several
defferent types of disc and it still is not working and the properites of my
burner says that its working fine. well sometimes it has actually burnt
something on the disc and sometimes it hasnt,when it does its only a tiny bit
but when i try to play it it spits the disc straight back out !! What is
underrun protection???

i would really appreciate it if you would be so kind to try and steer a
novise like myself in the right direction .

many thanks .Wesley

[Adam Albright]

Lets start with your underun question. It use to be a serious problem
a few years back but unless you have a pretty old DVD burner it
shouldn't be a problem these days.

To create a "good" disc the DVD burner expects that the data stream it
is trying to read will be uninterrupted. Even a pause of just a
fraction of a second can result in a ruined disc. A buffer underrun
happens IF the DVD burner's buffer (just memory built into the burner)
empties prior to the burner finishing it's job. The sad result is the
burner looks for data in the buffer, finds none, and thus the disc is
left spinning with nothing to be written to it in effect the burner
lost it's place and ends up creating a coaster or useless disc.
So-called underrun protection is suppose to prevent this from
happening either by increasing the buffer size or with some
controlling software, usually both.

The other problem IF it always happens at roughly the same place
suggests the DVD burner can't close out the disc, a critical step
called lead out and again the result is a ruined disc if it gets hung
up during this critical phase. See below

Several things can cause the problem. In no particular order, bad
media, meaning there was a tiny flaw in the blank disc. Unlikely if it
happens over and over on different discs. More likely the media you
are using isn't compatible with the burner. Some brands simply won't
work with some burners. The reason is differences in the reflectivity
of the surface. This generally will happen at the start or lead in,
not lead out. So probably not your problem.

Assuming you didn't try to burn some non compliant file types then I
would suspect your DVD burner may be screaming out for a firmware
update. This is similar to a BIOS update for a computer. It adds
improvements in how the device works. These are generally easy and
quick to apply. Check your vendor's web site to see if there is a
firmware update for your model.

Things that can cause a bump or ruined disc.

1. Your computer burps. Anything starting up on it's own or you
using the computer to do something else while you're trying to
burn a DVD is generally a no no. Something innocent like a
screen saver kicking in or a defrag or anti virus program starting
up can ruin a burn.

2. You're using newer media that your DVD burner doesn't support. You
get to match the speed rating. If you burned says it can burn 8X
disks, don't try to use 16X.