Windows Vista Vista CD burn failure

Tried to burn a CDR and the process refused to function. I kept removing files to reduce the size until it became rediculous, as indicated by the screen shots.

"Trying again" makes no difference. Any ideas?

 

Hello sparrow,

Is it a new computer? Have you burnt disks using it before?

Try a different brand of media.

IDE or SATA burner? Check for specific Vista chipset drivers (SATA controller drivers if they are separate).

Matt

 

Hi Matt,
This is a home built computer about 2 yrs. old, triple booting 2K, XP Pro x64, and vista home premium 64bit, and the writer works fine in the older OSs, and formatted the drive (vista said) getting ready to write, but then complained about the size.of the material I asked it to write. I deleted files from the list to get it down well below what it should be able to write and it was in a loop it couldn't escape from, not rechecking the amount of data, just repeating the same message with the numbers unchanged. I'm sure it's a bug in vista. I plan to put the files in a separate folder, just so many as it should be able to write and see if that solves the problem, but it's getting late and I'll wait 'til morning.

Thanks for your interest. Just thought it was interesting.
Mike

 

No problems Mike.

When I installed Vista, it worked, but I could see small problems. It did not work "well" until I found and installed all the manufacturer's drivers. Being two years old, your motherboard manufacturer may not have provided Vista drivers yet (and I think you should be careful about 64bit drivers). I needed to go to the chipset manufacturer's website to find Vista drivers, the graphics card's manufacturer's website to find them, the audio controller manufacturer's website to find those, etc. My hardware works really well now (software, hmmm ).

Maybe you have found current Vista 64bit drivers, if not, I suggest looking for them. Even if it does not solve the current problem, it may avoid headaches in the future.

Maybe another rather obvious question, have you tried third-party burning software? There are one or two freeware programs at www.majorgeeks.com.

I just wonder if it may be that Vista is using it's "best guess" (closest available drivers) for running the hardware.

Matt

 

Don't think so; haven't installed drivers for optical drives for years. All the hardware in the PC is working well. I did get vista video drivers. The MoBo works well with the older drivers and my new opteron dual core CPU is recognized by all the OSs including vista.

Calculating the size of data to write compared to space available is a program subroutine and giving the message which has the button to press is a program loop, also a subroutine, and failing to repeat the calculation and adjust the message and operation accordingly is a fault (bug) in the burner program, not the hardware.

Roxio and other 3rd party burning software do all this properly, but MS is just developing its burning software. It's so primative in XP that I and most others turn it off and use third party software, and I'm examining how it works in vista.

The formatted disk is still in the machine, but I haven't fired up vista yet today. I'll get back to you later.
Mike

 

Chipset (Mobo) drivers was the point I was trying to make, not drivers for the optical drive (they should be "automatic ").

I am wondering about IDE Controller drivers (which are part of the chipset drivers). IDE Controller drivers, mmm, control the drives. Vista may have installed the best available IDE Controller drivers from when your version of Vista was "minted ". If your system is several years old, I think you should find what (chipset) drivers are being offered currently. The chipset drivers that this first release of Vista has installed were given to MS quite a long time ago.

I found my that my mobo manufacturer did not supply updated chipset drivers for Vista, I looked up Vista drivers at the chipset manufacturer's website.

Put it this way...
MS says it releasing a new version of Windows, I expect they ask the chipset manufacturers to supply drivers for inclusion onto the Windows installation disk (and I would expect those drivers need to be certified by MS first). We are now several/many months after Vista's release. The motherboard manufacturers are probably watching what feedback the chipset manufacturers are getting about the new system.

At the moment I see the chipset manufacturers updating are their drivers, the motherboard manufacturers are adding them to their websites...but only if the new drivers are "verified "...and updating all the number of models of motherboard far outweighs updating the different model of chipset.

BASICALLY, considering that Vista is quite new and you have a motherboard that is several years old, I would find drivers from the chipset manufacturer, not the motherboard manufacturer (unless they are very recent). When the OS is older, I would recommend the other way round.

Matt
Edit: Not that this may solve the problem with burning the disk. If you have a good set of drivers though (not necessarily the most recent) it won't hurt .
XP burning may have been crude. Vista may be a step up. If Vista's is "worse ", I might ask why.

 

Problem solved, I think. Have to withdraw the suggestion of a bug, anyway.

Finally got the CDR fully written. Works like drag-and-drop. Problem is the lack of an adequate front end to the writing software, and explorer, the only thing to use, doesn't give the totals needed for writing a CDR; it excludes the size of subdirectories when looking at folder size, which I found unhelpful when choosing what and how much to burn. I had lots of html files and you know that their graphics are stored in subdirectories.

More trial and error (wasting time) made it possible to reach a small enough data size to burn. Then one can add more files if need be. Guess I'm spoiled by software that shows something like a bar graph as you add files. That should be easy enough to add to vista.

The actual burning is satisfactory, although slow (said it would take an hour to burn the CDR- didn't time it).
Disks are not finalized when ejected unless properties are set up to do so (the default) - a good idea.

I think, wirh more practice, I might get to like vista's burning methods; anyway it's a big step foreward from XP.

 

By the way, have you tried using shift and the arrow keys to mark files in explorer? Explorer goes crazy! the pane jumps back and forth and you have to guess what's going on because it's very difficult to see. I could only mark a few at a time, one reason it took me so long.

I don't like what's been done to the tab key in explorer either. With the new color scheme it's difficult to see what's highlighted or just where it jumped to, and it does jump all over the place, seemingly.

 

I might see it as quick and easy way to put, say, small to medium numbers of files onto disk. For splitting up (backing up) larger quantities, I think you are expected to use software that was built for the task. Same as I would see the inclusion of a file decompressor which you needed to install before WinXP, but it should not compete directly with the all the product suppliers in that area, putting them out of business. If MS were to include "full blown" programs, competing software manufacturers would see their market dry up.

There was a battle over browsers, I mentioned file decompression, Windows now has it's own built-in firewall and anti-spyware. Windows has also become more costly. I might rather have a basic operating system at a lower price and shop around for software to be added. What happens when there is no competition?

I could live without the built-in burner, Internet Explorer, Windows Mail, file decompression, WMP, Photo Gallery, Defender, Firewall, etc., etc., for a neat little system I made up myself. Updating all that software...well, you know I want Vista Skinny! (Dream on Matt! )

I have noticed some "jumping ", although I have not done much file work in Vista. I might burn some files today and see if it happens.

Matt

 

Vista works better in classic theme with classic windows, but I'm trying out all the new features I can, for the experience. Explorer works fine in classic, but then what's the point of the new graphics? The programmers obviously haven't finished working out all the bugs in the new graphics, if one can't use it conveniently to do something as simple as mark files to burn without a hassle.