DVD Burner weirdness

[Mercutio]

One of my customers seems to be having weird issues with Nero 6.3.something... I've been dealing with this for about 6 months on and off.

She is burning DVDs that seem to always error out at around 65% with
High Focus Tracking Errors" when burning DVDs, either with DVD Shrink or with Nero.

I've advised her to swap disc brands - we've tried Princo cheapies, "Hawk"-brand discs (worst. discs. ever.), HP +Rs, Verbatim -R and +Rs and a couple LiteOn-branded discs.

Maybe 1 in 4 discs she makes plays properly all the way through on a set-top or a different DVD-ROM drive. Her discs, which are generally pristine as far as dust, fingerprint etc generally give CRC errors if you try to rip or copy them - these are the ones that finish Nero's burn process without errors.

We've tried upping the firmware on her drive (4x LiteOn unit), even swapped it for an 8x NEC and then a 16x LiteOn.

Still happens.

I've swapped IDE cables. Her hard disk is a SATA model. She can burn audio CDs or make CD copies all day long without fail.

She'd been using an OEM copy of Nero 6. I let her "borrow" my full copy when we tried the NEC drive and I re-ghosted the machine from the same disc image I use for just about everyone else's computer a few weeks ago.

She still has the same problems. They aren't going away. And I don't know what else to try.

 

[Buck]

So, it's not the burner, media, burning software, cable, or user. It would also seem that it is unrelated to other applications and drivers, since you ghosted a new image that works for other clients (I'm expecting that there weren't any changes to the settings or files on this new ghosted image except for the installation of Nero 6).

What does that leave? Hardware? Don't tell me you're using a WD SATA drive?

 

[JKKJ]

Perhaps Nero anything and something in this particular system don't get along? Maybe try ECDC just to rule out a Nero incompatibility somewhere?

 

[Buck]

Merc did try DVD Shrink without success.

 

[JKKJ]

Oops, missed that.

I knew I should've kept my mouth shut.
It's Mercutio, and I knew he would have checked that, but I didn't read carefully enough...

 

[sechs]

Doesn't DVDShrink use the Nero libraries? This could still be a Nero problem.

 

[Buck]

Doesn't DVDShrink use the Nero libraries? This could still be a Nero problem.

Good point sechs. I believe DVDShrink uses the libraries from which ever burning software you have installed. So, if Nero is installed, then those would be the libraries that DVDShrink would use.

 

[CityK]

CD-Freaks Search Results

 

[Mercutio]

Read it already. Nothing helpful.

Hard disk is a Samsung 120GB. I would not sully anyone's PC with a WD drive at this point.

Two different copies of Nero 6 have been tried. XP's builtin burning for CDs works OK. Nero can also burn a CD just fine.

The ease of use in DVDShrink + Nero contributed greatly to my customer buying this PC. I've seen her use Nero and Nero express. She does know how to work both programs. I get the errors too, when I sit down and use that PC.

Motherboard is a gigabyte VT600. Processor is an XP2500.

 

[Will Rickards]

The only things you haven't tried:
Swap the power supply for a higher power one.
Swap the motherboard type (so the IDE chipset changes to say an intel based one).

 

[Buck]

Could this be an installation conflict from installing different versions of Nero?

Have you tested her memory?

 

[Will Rickards]

The memory sounds like an easy swap out and the most likely culprit of ones remaining.

 

[Mercutio]

Memory has been swapped. Went from Crucial to Mushkin IIRC (upgraded from 512MB to 1GB, about 6 weeks ago).
Uninstalled Nero OEM before installing Nero Retail. She went back to Nero OEM when I ghosted her PC (at that time I suspected RAM).

PSU? One would think that would manifest in other ways. There's a HEC 350W unit in there now for a DVD Burner, Hard disk, internal card reader, 1GB of RAM, Radeon 9000 and XP2500. I don't think overloading is an issue.

Meh. What the hell. I'll try it sometime.

 

[Buck]

Memory has been swapped. Went from Crucial to Mushkin IIRC (upgraded from 512MB to 1GB, about 6 weeks ago).
Uninstalled Nero OEM before installing Nero Retail. She went back to Nero OEM when I ghosted her PC (at that time I suspected RAM).

PSU? One would think that would manifest in other ways. There's a HEC 350W unit in there now for a DVD Burner, Hard disk, internal card reader, 1GB of RAM, Radeon 9000 and XP2500. I don't think overloading is an issue.

Meh. What the hell. I'll try it sometime.

Ideally, you should be able to build a duplicate system and replicate the problem. If the duplicate system doesn't manifest the same issue you could begin swapping hardware.

 

[Mercutio]

I build PCs like her's more or less weekly that don't have these problems.

 

[Buck]

I build PCs like her's more or less weekly that don't have these problems.

There you go, easy peasy.

 

[sechs]

Have you tried an older version Nero?

 

[Mercutio]

I've been contemplating stepping down to 5.5, actually.

 

[MaxBurn]

I have a somewhat similar problem, seems to be the quality of media.

I have a Panasonic DVD-RP56 (one of the cheaper ones with the Sage Faroudja chipset). Unfortunately despite the wonderful picture quality it has, the DVD reader in it is rather particular about the media it's fed. It's failure mode sounds similar to your described experience.

I have tried several different types of DVD + and - 8x media and it just won't play them. This is when the disks are burnt at 8x, but when I burn just about any disk at 4x they play just fine.

Failure mode I experience with any disk burnt at 8x is that the middle chapters in a movie start pixelating and then progressivly get worse till I can only see snatches of the movie. Tried Optorite, TDK and Memorex so far. Seems that -R works better for me (gets further through the movie).

 

[Fushigi]

Have you replaced the burner's IDE cable? Also maybe try a different lead off the PSU.

 

[timwhit]

Try some Ritek media. I've had good results with it.

 

[MaxBurn]

Oh yeah, got some Ritek from newegg couple weeks ago. Suposedly R03 I think. Got the same results with the first two disks off a 50 spool and gave the rest to a friend.

Sorry about the thread hijack, but I would try burning at a slower speed and see if that helps.

 

[Pradeep]

Definitely try something other than Nero. I believe you would have a copy of Veritas RecordNow DX from Sony?

 

[Mercutio]

Microwaved it.

But, OK, I have Roxio. It is lame and won't make video DVDs but I guess I can try making a data DVD or something.

 

[MaxBurn]

Can't you just make a data DVD and put the movie files in a video_ts folder so that it will play on a set top player? That might enable you to try out roxio with video DVD's. Havn't tried this myself, I am having excellent luck with Nero 6.3.1.6.

Of course if you burn a data DVD and can't copy it back to the hard drive...

 

[CityK]

What about trying with DVDDecryptor...I don't think it uses Nero libraries

Could it be aspi related?

http://www.dvddecrypter.com/index.php?act=download

 

[Mercutio]

Meh. I swapped everything - EVERYTHING but the motherboard and CPU, that impacts DVD burning. Different PSU, different burner, different cable, retail copy of Nero from original disc, clean Windows install, even a stack of nice Verbatim DatalifePlus +R discs...

If nothing fixes it... I dunno, power conditioning, maybe???

 

[Buck]

BIOS settings are okay?

 

[iGary]

...She still has the same problems. They aren't going away. And I don't know what else to try.

This is a common problem with Nero and other aftermarket CD/DVD authoring applications. The problem is a conflict between the default Windows optical writer drivers and Nero optical writer drivers.

The solution (with Nero) is to run Nero Driver Cleaner. You will see a dialogue box after you run it telling you which drivers it "cleaned" during the process. You may also see a message about "fixing the registry."

http://www.ahead.de/en/Driven-CleanTool_and_RegistryChecker.html




And, while you are there, you might as well update Nero V6.3 to V6.6.0.1

http://www.ahead.de/en/nero-up.php