CD drive errors on write

[Mike Ditka]

When I try to write data files to blank CD, the wizard goes through the
whole sequence, "writing the data files to the CD", "performing final steps
to make the CD ready to use", then terminates with the message:

"There was an error in the writing process. The disc you have attempted to
write may no longer be useable."

As far as I can tell, the CD has not been modified.

I have a dual-boot system with both XP and Linux, and I have no problem
burning CD's from Linux, so I know the CD drive is working OK. I have been
able to burn CD's from XP in the past, but I first ran into this problem
earlier this year. I have XP up-to-date with SP2 and all subsequent
high-priority fixes.

Dell Dimension 2400
Samsung CD-R/RW SW-2525

Any ideas why XP isn't able to burn a CD?

Thanks,
MD

 

[Malke]

When I try to write data files to blank CD, the wizard goes through
the whole sequence, "writing the data files to the CD", "performing
final steps to make the CD ready to use", then terminates with the
message:

"There was an error in the writing process. The disc you have
attempted to write may no longer be useable."

As far as I can tell, the CD has not been modified.

I have a dual-boot system with both XP and Linux, and I have no
problem
burning CD's from Linux, so I know the CD drive is working OK. I have
been able to burn CD's from XP in the past, but I first ran into this
problem
earlier this year. I have XP up-to-date with SP2 and all subsequent
high-priority fixes.

Dell Dimension 2400
Samsung CD-R/RW SW-2525

Any ideas why XP isn't able to burn a CD?

I would look at whether the drive is using PIO or DMA. Windows has a
nasty habit of dropping a drive down to PIO without telling you after
there have been some errors. Here's an excellent page by MVP Hans-Georg
Michna with an explanation and a fix:

http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

Malke

 

[Mike Ditka]

Thanks for the idea.

As it turns out, the secondary IDE channel is already set to "DMA if
available", and the current transfer mode is "Ultra DMA mode 2". So this is
not the problem occurring on my CD drive.

I also noticed that the primary IDE channel is "Ultra DMA mode 5", but that
may simply indicate that different modes are used for hard.disks and CD
players.

MD

 

[Malke]

Thanks for the idea.

As it turns out, the secondary IDE channel is already set to "DMA if
available", and the current transfer mode is "Ultra DMA mode 2". So
this is not the problem occurring on my CD drive.

I also noticed that the primary IDE channel is "Ultra DMA mode 5", but
that may simply indicate that different modes are used for hard.disks
and CD players.

MD

Well, it was worth a shot. I don't have a definitive answer for you, but
here are some links that may be helpful:

HOW TO: Troubleshoot Issues That Occur When You Write Data to a CD-R or
CD-RW Optical Disc in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q324129

Alex Nichol on cd burning in XP
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpcd.htm

Malke

 

[Mike Ditka]

Thanks again for some ideas. This time they led to a solution.

The Microsoft page advised me to do a search for the message, but then
couldn't find the message. However, in poking around at that Microsoft
site, one of the articles reminded me that there is a "record" tab on the
disk properties dialog. I lowered the speed from "highest possible" to
8X -- and then remembered, that's what I've been using on Linux. Apparently
this CD drive can no longer perform at the highest speed it thinks it has.

After I lowered the speed, it wrote the CD without any difficulty.


MD

 

[Stan Brown]

Thanks again for some ideas. This time they led to a solution.

The Microsoft page advised me to do a search for the message, but then
couldn't find the message. However, in poking around at that Microsoft
site, one of the articles reminded me that there is a "record" tab on the
disk properties dialog. I lowered the speed from "highest possible" to
8X -- and then remembered, that's what I've been using on Linux. Apparently
this CD drive can no longer perform at the highest speed it thinks it has.

After I lowered the speed, it wrote the CD without any difficulty.

Windows XP's native CD burning is from Roxio, and I've had nothing
but trouble with Roxio software since Easy CD Creator 3. In
particular, I've had the same trouble you described -- XP can't write
to a disk, with no indication why. You're lucky to have found a
workaround, but my own solution was to use third-party non-Roxio
software, which does the job just fine.

 

[Guest]

I'm having this same problem with the same error message and so far none of
the solutions posted have seemed to work - are there any 3rd party softwares
that are available free of charge and would you happen to know any of the
links? thanks for your help