I have been using Nero-7 for burning CDs and DVDs for the past several years and have had no problems nor complaints. I use it to prepare Data DVDs, and have not burned CDs in the last year or so.

Today I tried to burn a CD, since the job was only about 30 MB no sense using a 4+ GB DVD disc. Everything seemed to work normally, Nero said it was burining the CD at 48x, then it aborted with the job ribbon at the 50% mark, saying "Could not perform EndTrack. Burn process failed."

I can burn DVDs to my heart's content. Yesterday I burned a series of 24 of them without generating a single coaster. I cannot write to a CD. I tried different files, thinking there might be something wrong with the one I was trying to burn, but no luck. Interestingly enough, the CD comes out of the CD burner absolutely pristine -- nothing has been written to it. The CD is a good quality TDK disc.

The CD burner is a Philips SPD2513P, and has performed faultlessly until now. I suspect the problem may be related to an indiscretion on my part. Several months ago I ignored my normal rule of "If it ain't broke don't fix it" and succumbed to the enticements of the "Philips Intelligent Agent" to update the drive firmware to the latest versions. The drive still worked writing DVDs afterwards, so I figured all was right with the world. I ran the agent again today, and it confirmed that I was still using the latest firmware, but it will only write DVDs, not CDs.

Any ideas on what I should try next?

tanstaafl.

Try forcing it to write at a slower speed.

Have you tried any other CD?
/longshot

Yes, several, but they are all from the same batch of TDK discs.

However, this was a batch of 50 discs, and over the past couple of years I have successfully burned all but the remaining four or five.

It almost has to be a software/firmware thing, because it will burn DVDs flawlessly, but won't even pretend to write to CDs. Well, it pretends to write, in that it says it is writing, but it really doesn't write anything to the disc.

Hmmm... I think my Windows Vista OS has something built into it for writing to CDs, I'll try that and see if it does anything. If it does, I guess that would confirm that the problem is not hardware related.

tanstaafl.

edit: Nope, Windows won't write to the CD either. Tried several different discs, no dice. Seems odd that it will write DVD but not CD data.

db

edit #2: Attached is a log file created by the burn failure. Maybe it will make sense to somebody?

db

I don't seem to have any options for doing that. Or, more likely, I'm not smart enough to figure out where to look for them.

tanstaafl.

The writer has two different lasers inside to write to CDs and DVDs as the wavelength is different so it is possible that it is a hardware fault.

I agree, probably a hardware fault.

The real purpose of my reply is to plug CDBurnerXP, a free program which I now much prefer to the Nero bloatware. I don't want my burning program to manage my music, transcode to VCD and make coffee. I want to burn and create ISOs and burn arbitrary files.

Matthew

This is the relevant snippet from the log file:

That sense key data would likely be very useful if you could find a service manual for the drive. I can't find one, though.

"Power calibration error" might tend to indicate that it's a hardware problem. Maybe. Do you have it set up to simulate before burning? What happens if you flip that switch?

Ugh. I feel your pain. I've had at least 3 DVD burners die on me. Fortunately they're dirt cheap these days.

Also, I second the suggestion to download CDBurnerXP. Get that Nero bloatware off your system and load up the free software. It runs much better.

Switch? What switch? I can find nothing in any of the Nero options about that, but I am using the simplified "Nero Express" aspect of Nero 7, rather than the more complex "Nero Burning ROM", as my needs are very simple: I burn Data DVDs and once in a great while a Data CD. I will certainly look into the CDBurnerXP program, it wouldn't hurt my feelings at all to get rid of Nero. What I dislike most about Nero is that when you install or update it, you have to be very careful to uncheck every option box or else Nero becomes your default everything, from picture viewer to Office Suite. Well, not quite, but they're probably working on their own spreadsheet program as I write this.

I hadn't realized how inexpensive CD/DVD burners had become. Not too many years ago a friend of mine bought the first CD burner on the market for $800. I think it ran at about 4x speed, maybe even 2x. I just checked NewEgg and I have a choice of dozens of them for less money than I paid for my last box of blank DVD discs!

Does anyone have any recommendation for a replacement drive? It looks like $30 will let me take my choice of just about anything from NewEgg. My requirements are SATA, and must not be SONY (I won't do business with them because of the rootkit scandal. I'm sure my personal boycott has caused them great financial distress over the past few years...)

Finally, does anyone have a simple explanation of what the DVD-R and DVD+R business is about? My DVD burner is supposed to be compatible with both, but the last time I tried the DVD+R discs I ended up with 40% coasters, whereas the DVD-R discs I just bought have worked 100%.

tanstaafl.

Yeah, it's ridiculous how cheap they are. Of course, maybe that's the problem

Does anyone know if Plextor drives are still good? I have an SATA Plextor drive and I like it a lot. I'd recommend mind, but it's like 4 years old and I doubt that model is still for sale.

*edit*

Exactly. Nero has been bloatware for half a decade or more. It's really a shame, because they were the big alternative to software that came with your CD Burner, like Roxio. Then Nero became the software that came with the drive, and along with that started adding all the crap.

Definitely check out CDBurnerXP. It's great for what you want to do, simple disc authoring. You can choose how fast it burns to it very easily too.

I've had no problems with the Sony Optiarc drives but you don't want a Sony drive. My current main drive is a LG BluRay writer that does all the DVD and CD standards as well.

For compatibility with other hardware, DVD-R is generally better supported than DVD+R. They are two competing writable DVD standards.

True, though isn't the competition pretty much over at this point? DVD-R basically won out because after a point the drive manufacturers all started supporting both standards, and because DVD-R blank media has always been less expensive, even if only marginally, consumers bought those discs.

It certainly was a terrible step for disc authoring though. It created a lot of confusion and a lot of incompatibility, especially with what home theater DVD players could support, which seemed to always be different.

Oh, and I like LG drives too.

From what I can tell, both standards are still widespread and neither of them seem to be going away any time soon. Both are officially endorsed by the DVD organisation as well.

I could be mistaken, but I think the first home theater DVD-recorders only burned DVD-R, while the first DVD players only could read DVD+R. I know my Pioneer DV717 couldn't read DVD-R.

Stig

Another vote for CDBurnerXP and against Nero. The next problem is How To Remove All Traces of Nero. Googling suggests it isn't as easy as you think.
Not only is it bloatware, but also sticks it's tentacles deep in your system. Is there a -ware expression for that?

So, my plug is for Revo Uninstaller (which should be used in conjunction with other strategies to get rid of Nero).

Revo Uninstaller is another invaluable tool in my belt. I love it, though it should be used cautiously, as it can very occasionally remove too much. But for something like Nero I would definitely use it.

I think tentacle-ware sounds good to me Though I think most bloatware tends to have its tentacles dug deep already, so it pretty much covers it. For things like Norton and McAfee I have to carry around updated uninistallers made by those companies specifically for their own applications. Norton's is especially annoying, and seems to need updating every month.


I just looked at Newegg and I suppose you're correct. There's slightly more DVD-R, but not by much. I still think DVD-R is the more popular one overall, though, and the most compatible, but you said that to begin with...so I guess we're in agreement!


It really was all over the place. I had a couple DVD players that couldn't read + and a couple that couldn't read -.

Early Pioneer players especially, in my experience, had trouble playing burned media. My mother has one still, and I've given up being able to play anything on it.

It is stupid that there were even two standards in the first place. Add in the rewritable formats and then the dual layer variants and its a mess. I think DVD+R is actually better from a technical standpoint than DVD-R but it isn't as compatible with older hardware.

My LG drive can read but not write HD DVD discs as well. I can find sites that sell internal LG writers but the LG site for the UK only lists external drives and everything else is discontinued. Not sure what is going on there.

The answer is probably no. I know that a couple of year ago at least some of their drives were just rebadged drives from other manufacturers.

I haven't looked recently, but I doubt they've gone back to making all their own drives.

For tanstaafl, I'd say LG or Pioneer. They're generally all good drives. NEC did a joint venture with Sony called Optiarc but that ended up going 100% Sony so they're no longer in the optical drive business.

I purchase only Pioneer drives here now, since 2007 or so.

Cheers