I need some advanced help to figure out what may be a simple problem. It may be that I simply need a new burner. The burner I am using is a basic DVD-RW non-dual layer model that is about 4 years old.The problem I am running into is that both ImgBurn & Decrypter will not get past 7-10% of the burn process and yet the program will just keep right on rolling. Yesterday the program continued for over 5 hours while I was away. No write errors and no activity (lights) indicated via the burner itself and I had to manually reboot the system as the program would not respond to an over ride or cancel command. I started noticing bizarre issues last week when I would attempt to burn movies that I had previously shrank to the hard drive. The movies would finish burning but around the 10% mark, near the center hole of the disc, there would be a small but obvious "blank" ring(!!??)but the disc would continue to burn after "mystery ring". The process I have been using for the last year or so is the one click ripit4me method (what a shame as I LOVED those guys!!)
Could I get some useful suggestions from members? If it's a matter of needing a new burner, so be it. The only thing is, I have been burning audio without similar issues.
SirV,
Welcome to the forum. You might need to clean the laser but I suspect that the burner needs to be retired. A 4 year old burner does not have the necessary firmware update for the newer blank media. W/ Burners going for under $50.00 in the U.S. I would just replace it and then use Good Blank Media like Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden. The CD laser has nothing to do w/ the DVD laser so that is why you are burning CD's w/ no problem
Take a look @ this for a good idea on which burners to look for.
As for media, you want to be buying Taiyo Yuden if you intend to buy in bulk. Try Meritline.com, Rima.com or Supermediastore.com - if in the UK, svp.co.uk is a great site for media, and pretty cheap too.
Other good makes are Verbatim and Sony (Made in Japan discs only though)!
If you have anoy other questions when it comes to buying that drive, just post back here or make yourself a new thread in the "dvdrw drives" forum towards the middle of the page. Someone will assist you in either :)
