Hey all, as many of you know I recently bought a new computer with a CD/DVD burner. The computer works great but I seem to be having a lot of weird issues with my burner, so I'm wondering if maybe you guys can help me troubleshoot what is going on here. To burn CDs I use "Roxio Easy CD creator 5 basic" at 16x speed. Lately I've been using old CD's from a friend who uses them in his CD duplication business. Most of them work fine but have come out misprinted so he gives away the blank misprinted ones to people who may need them. My problems started the other day after my first burning of some data back-up, on that occasion I used a blank HP disc and that worked fine. Ever since though I've been using my friend's discs and that is where the problems seem to start. Using Roxio I tried to burn something on my friend's disc but it didn't work instead spitting out the disc and giving me 2 errors "buffer underrun error" and "retry failed". I went through the whole stack of my friend's discs getting the same errors left and right using Roxio. However when I tried burning one of the spit out discs on "Real One" it worked fine. I went to Roxio and tried it again, this time unchecking "buffer under run prevention" and it has worked fine since until today when I ran out of space on that CD and had to resort to using one my friend's last CD's in the stack he gave me, burning with "buffer underrun prevention" off. Once again this one didn't work, but it burned most of the way (98%) than give me the same 2 errors described above. I did manage to do a burn to my HP disc and after a little trouble (user error ) it worked fine(I burned this one at 8x). So far there have only been 2 good CDs in my friend's stack, one burned with "Roxio" and one burned with "Real One." I'm utterly confused by this and am trying to figure out if it is the discs or Roxio or my burner, maybe the speed setting. The computer is only a week old so I'd be suprised if it is the computer. I am leaning towards the discs being the cause but I'm not so sure. I've tried everything, closing open programs, restarting my machine, disabling virus scanners, defragging my drive and nothing seems to work for those other CDs. Anyone have experience with this? what does it sound like is going on here? Do I need to adjust my burning speed down maybe from 16x to 8x? Never had these problems with my old burner. thanks.
What is the rated speed of the CDs your friend gave you? Chances are, they were not meant to be burned at that speed, or are simply of poorer quality than what you are used to. Buy yourself a small pack of TDK CDRs (16x or 32x rated) and see if the problem persists. You may also want to check that DMA is enabled for your CD Writer. It can be found in Control Panel->System->Device Manager->IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers->Primary (or Secondary, depending on where your CD-ROM is) Channel.
Thanks for the tip Max. I managed to get a whole bunch of other CDs off of my friend today. So far I've gone through one trying Roxio and it didn't work so I tried another just using the XP "cd writer wizard" and it worked fine. Once again I'm at a loss for an explanation and can't figure out if it is Roxio or just certain CDs. I think I'll just keep trying to burn using the XP "CD writer wizard" with these CDs and see what happens then, going disc by disc.The big problem is that I don't know the rated speed or brand of the CD's that I'm getting from him. Any other suggestions? thanks.
Hmmmm, it could be a problem with Roxio...I recall a series of patches a year ago that fixed major problems with EasyCD and Windows XP. Maybe try Nero or CDRWin? Although, the evaluation versions tend to have speed-limiters on them. *sigh* You verified that DMA is enabled? Also, is your hard drive on the same IDE channel as the CD writer? Rule of thumb is to have the CD writer as a master on its own IDE channel.
Definitely go to Roxio's website and download the latest patch available. This might be all you need. Oh, and also check for new firmware for your burner. -Christian
I hooked my self up with the latest version of the Roxio software and the drive upgrade from Roxio and was able to burn some stuff to disc last night. I'll just have to keep playing with it but it appears my biggest problem right now seems to be importing a previous session when I put my unfinished data discs in. Importing a session seems to lock up my computer and make the disc drive unresponsive unless I restart. I'll just see how it goes. I just hope it keeps working.
