CD-R lockup/error problems.

[jello]

I'm having some problems with my CD burner. Almost every time I burn a disc CD creator reports read errors during the verification. The actual discs are fine in my regular cdrom drive, but if I put it in the burner, the whole computer locks dead. Anyone have any clue what might cause this?

System info: AMD Duron 800, Asus A7V mobo, Matsushita 16x cd drive, Smart n' Friendly 2x2x24 burner, Maxtor 30gig hdd, and using EZ Cd creator.

Thanks in advance.

 

[jello]

Bump. Really need some help here.

 

[rw120555]

Is the smart and friendly some sort of ancient 2x burner, a USB drive, or what? In any event, this wouldn't be the first CD burner that has caused computer lockups.

Generic solutions you can try:

1) See if there is a firmware update
2) Try burning at a slower speed (I guess you'd be going from 2X to 1X???)
3) Disable all startup programs and see if the drive will work ok. If it does, there may be a conflict somewhere. Use Msconfig or the PC mag utility Startup Cop or something like that.

If this drive only does 2X though, I'd seriously consider buying something different.

 

[rw120555]

Oh, and disabling DMA on the CDRW is another common generic solution to try; this Iomega Doc shows you how to do it. Incidentally, Iomega's web pages have a lot of good online docs that will apply to drives besides Iomega.

 

[jello]

It's a few year old internal IDE burner. As far as I can tell there are no firmware updates available. Drive burns fine, and reads most discs fine. Only has a problem w/ discs that the drive itself burned. Even works with other burned cds fine. It's really weird. Buying a newer drive would be optimal, of course, but that has to wait until a job comes along.

 

[rw120555]

This does sound weird. Sorta sounds like both the read and the write may be off a bit. It doesn't write perfectly, but it is good enough for better readers to handle the disks it burns. But, its own reader isn't good enough to handle its own disks.

Not sure what else to recommend, other than maybe cleaning the drive. There are various CD-drive cleaners out there, maybe one of those would help. Also, if you are using 80 Minute disks, you might have better luck with 74 Minute. Try a good quality name brand 74 minute CDR (e.g. TDK) and see if problems persist. Good luck.