Well I'm sorry for doubting any of you, but I uninstalled ECDC5 and loaded Nero. There couldn't have been more of a change. EZ had screwed my computer over to the point of making it VERY difficult to boot, and through various attempts with various boot methods, I finally got in to uninstall it.

Needless to say, I was very suprised by Nero. I think I had tried to use a previous version that messed my computer up even more than EZ, but this one was incredible! It encoded several non-VCD standard MPEG files, and even a WMV file! That's just amazing.

HOWEVER. I still could not get anything that claimed to read VCDs to play it. I burned a simple VCD with 4 or 5 tracks and a very simple menu. I attempted to use ATI's VCD player, one I got from Cnet, and my dad's DVD player again. I understand the possible issues with the DVD player, but due to the fact that the VCD doesn't play normally in any of the VCD programs I tried, I'm inclined to think it's something else. I was able to get the individual tracks to play in WMP (with the dat files).

I'm going to check if the DVD player really can read these files, and try to work out some other possible causes of the problem. Anyone have an idea?