CD/DVD burning prob

[London Geezer]

Hey guys, another problem from my best mate:

He has a laptop, with a CD burner and an external DVD writer too.

His laptop is fucked, and he just cannot get Nero, Roxio or other programs to just work. They freeze everytime he tries.

The laptop is not even old, not even a year old, not sure what processor he has but it's in the 2800+ range, with 512MB RAM.

What is the problem?

Why is his laptop just so totally unstable it hardly works? He has reinstalled windows countless times but it doesn't seem to solve the problem.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Probably conflict between the various low-level device drivers most of these burning programs use. Installing both Roxio and Nero is ususally a sure way to get problems. Also, don't install any of their packet writing software unless you really need it.

Unless he's wiping the disk and reinstalling from scratch, any repair installs will just keep the problematic drivers in place.

 

[London Geezer]

Probably conflict between the various low-level device drivers most of these burning programs use. Installing both Roxio and Nero is ususally a sure way to get problems. Also, don't install any of their packet writing software unless you really need it.

Unless he's wiping the disk and reinstalling from scratch, any repair installs will just keep the problematic drivers in place.

Well, no he hasn't got both installed at any one time. They just don't work when he installs them.
The external drive he bought (Firewire one, very cool i might just buy it off from him) had NO dirvers, it just worked. And it did work for a while, then after a while everything went pear-shaped.

What can he do? I have NO idea, everything works just fine on my system, even having countless programs to burn CD/DVDs...

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well, no he hasn't got both installed at any one time. They just don't work when he installs them.

Can you be more specific? What errors do you get? Tried Googling for the errors?

The external drive he bought (Firewire one, very cool i might just buy it off from him) had NO dirvers, it just worked. And it did work for a while, then after a while everything went pear-shaped.

What can he do? I have NO idea, everything works just fine on my system, even having countless programs to burn CD/DVDs...

Low level system drivers don't always get uninstalled when you uninstall the program that put them there. If you look at the driver properties of a CD device, you can see all the extra drivers that things install.

 

[London Geezer]

Can you be more specific? What errors do you get? Tried Googling for the

Well the program just freezes and he needs to restart the whole system. No error messages.

Low level system drivers don't always get uninstalled when you uninstall the program that put them there. If you look at the driver properties of a CD device, you can see all the extra drivers that things install.

Well i'd have thought reistalling windows would take care of that? He hasn't done it in a while, but it's a pain to reinstall Windows everytime there's a problem.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well the program just freezes and he needs to restart the whole system. No error messages.

That's a driver conflict, or maybe a firmware conflict (in the CD drive). It might be a conflict with the IDE drivers if the laptop uses any special drivers. Could be an ASPI problem. It's all low level stuff incompatibilty stuff that might be fixed by updating drivers or firmware, or identifying what is causing the problem and removing it.

Well i'd have thought reistalling windows would take care of that? He hasn't done it in a while, but it's a pain to reinstall Windows everytime there's a problem.

Only if you do a full install, not a repair install. Look at the CD drivers and see what else is hooked in there. Also try running a boot with logging and see what drivers are loading up.

 

[London Geezer]

Well i have no idea what to do to fix those problems, my best bet would be to once again reinstall windows.
No repair though? that might be the problem, everytime he reinstalled windows, he did the "repair", not the full reinstall.

 

[PC-Engine]

After you do a clean fresh install, create a restore point THEN install the CD burning apps.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well i have no idea what to do to fix those problems, my best bet would be to once again reinstall windows.
No repair though? that might be the problem, everytime he reinstalled windows, he did the "repair", not the full reinstall.

Well a repair install will try and keep all your old settings and any third party drivers - it will only reinstall Windows OS while keeping everything else from the old settings. If you are having low level driver problems, a repair install will preseve all those problematic drivers.

Your best bet is to uninstall all burning software, check the drivers used by the CDRs (remove those from the system and the registry), use any software cleaners (like the Nero cleaner you can get from their website). Then update the firmware in the CDRs, and install one burning program like Nero to test. Google for any problems using the names of those drives. Test with other drives if you can.

If you still can't get it working, then try a full Windows reinstall. Remember to back up all your important data first.

 

[London Geezer]

Thanks matey, will tell him to do that.

 

[PC-Engine]

XP has a built-in preferences/settings migration too that you can use to transfer your XP settings etc when you do a full reinstall

 

[mito]

After you do a clean fresh install, create a restore point THEN install the CD burning apps.

Way to go.

 

[Frank]

Or even better: do a clean install, make sure you've got at least 2 disk partitions (D: for Data) and make a Ghost image of the C: drive.

Additional warning: many laptops and other computers have a recovery partition / CD. Better use a plain WinXP CD to do the installing and forget about that recovery stuff, as it tends to throw every driver and demo it can find on the C: drive.