Burning cd issue in Nero 8.1

[Anwar]

Hey Guys,

I'm having Nero 8.1 installed on my system. Recently i was trying to record a data cd and i got a strange error message on my desktop. It says "illegal disc" while the process was going on and i was unable to burn the cd any further. Does any body know about this error? Can any body help me out to resolve the above issue? Any suggestion on the above issue would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Sam.D]

Turn on your DMA and use only top quality media.

[Raine]

DMA (Direct memory access) mode is a high performance mode for transferring data to and from devices, in particular, to CD and DVD burner devices.

The burner devices can function in either DMA or PIO modes. DMA mode allows the processor to transfer large pieces of data with very little software overhead, therefore requiring low CPU utilization. In this mode, high speed burning can be performed in background with other programs running.

PIO mode requires CPU processing for every few bytes sent to the device, so that CPU utilization becomes very high when trying to burn at high speeds.

[Macarenas]

Windows XP reverts to PIO mode after several attempts to use DMA mode have failed. If this had happened, Windows XP will not return to DMA mode even if you instruct it to do so. Microsoft considers this a safeguard, but many users find this feature confusing. In order to manually reset the access mode, you can uninstall the drive and reboot. Windows will detect the drive at the first boot and use it. You can then set the access mode to DMA, and Windows will use that setting. Of course, if there is a real problem using DMA mode, Windows will revert to PIO mode again. You may want to consider alternative burning software and verify that it doesn't cause Windows to retreat to PIO mode.