LIGHTNING UK!

Is that file actually on the disc you've just burnt? I hope you're using a DVD-RW/DVD+RW for all this testing, it would be a waste otherwise! Personally I'd be creating an image and trying it inside of a virtual machine via virtual drive of some kind.

Does the disc actually look burnt?

can you post a few screenshots showing the IBG data? or at least post up the IBG file so we can do it? The speeds you're getting don't look all that bad to me for an 8x burn. The dips in the buffer etc are normal with a lot of drives, it happens when the drive performs its quality checking routines.

No. If you have no plans on returning it, take it apart and mess around with it. You might see what's broken - I'm not sure if they use belts/cogs or anything to turn the spindle.

It spins it and tries to read it. I assume it won't read anything now yeah? CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW If it's new (which you say it is), send it back for a replacement.

If it's not spinning the disc then it sounds like the motor has gone. I can hear most of my drives spinning when I insert the tray - even when there's no disc in them.

If you read the guides that tell you how to burn a DL disc, all will become clear. DL = Double layer = a disc with 2 physical layers for the drive to write to (like a sandwich). The 'layer break' is where the drive switches from one layer to the other.

You might find those RW's are a bit rubbish to start with - that's kinda normal for Ritek discs! If it's not erasing then you should probably just bin it and get yourself some Verbatim DVD-RW's instead (or the DVD+RW ones). They're better, but still not as good a write once media (DVD-R, DVD+R) from the same company or Taiyo Yuden.

They're all close to 50/50 so just pick any of them... it really doesn't make THAT much of a difference! If you happen to have a scene change on one of them then I'd go for that one, but being a home movie, I doubt there will be.

Try for as near to a 50/50 split as possible with the least padding. Use the 'Preview' so you can actually see what you're looking at. Read the double layer burning guide if you need more help with the previewer - or search the forum, the questions have been answered before.

Look over by the clock in the system tray, you should see a little icon with lightning through it. Left click it and click the entry that says 'No Media' (or something like it). That's the virtual drive. You'll then get a browse box pop up, select your ISO and click ok. The virtual drive will be visible in 'My Computer' (and other programs) as a normal cd/dvd drive.

It's nothing do with the LB position, the LBA/Sector the drive can't read is Waaaaaay before the layer break.

It's important that you have the version from the ImgBurn.com mirror. It's the only one that can build XP install discs properly - as you need to use the DOS character set and not ASCII - and all the other versions change the setting to ASCII (it was fixed in a silent update).

It means you got a bad burn. It's much easier if you just copy + paste everything from the Log window.

It was a silent update on the original day of release (or the day after... something like that)

Try redownloading Imgburn from the Imgburn.com mirror. If that doesn't work, email or attach your MDS file and I'll look into it.

You need a program to author such a disc (or VIDEO_TS set) from the files. That's not something ImgBurn does. ImgBurn will burn the VIDEO_TS folder once you've gotten that far.

There's nothing to say Ashampoo is using the same methods to decode the files. Please just try playing the files in graphedit. I have a beta of ImgBurn that can actually output the decoded raw pcm data (but as a wav file) exactly as it would be written to the disc. Playing those files would soon tell you where the problem lies.

It would be handy to see if ImgBurn picks up on the same error when burning normal SL discs. I can't even find out what the error code the drive is returning ( ASC 0x00, ASCQ 0x0B ) actually means! Can you burn such a disc in ImgBurn and provide us with the log again please? Any SL discs will do... DVD-RW, DVD+RW etc... the more the merrier!

The decoding is done by directshow, it's nothing to do with ImgBurn. Unless you've got some weird files or very dodgy filters installed, I doubt they're as bad as you're making out. (It's hard to imagine these things) What kind of files were they? If you play the files in GraphEdit do they sound ok?

The image can be as big as you can fit on a disc, any limitation there comes from your BIOS more than anything. The 4GB limit is of a single file within the ISO9660 / Joliet file system. The field where you store the size of the file is 32 bits / 4 bytes / 2 words / 1 dword in length, hence the biggest value it can represent is just shy of 4GB. Assuming you've got the latest version (from the ImgBurn.com mirror), the program will auto correct any settings you might have got wrong if it notices you have an '\I386\NTLDR' file in your compilation. Once it's done that there's no reason for it to moan about anything NTLDR related.

I've added a 'None' option to the 'Shutdown Action' list just for you. So even if you click the Shutdown box (and 'None' is selected as the action) it won't actually do anything when the program has finished reading/burning etc.

Unless you have some way of reading UDF in the bootable bit then you're stuck. ISO9660 in ImgBurn will accept files up to 4GB but it's impossible to go any bigger than that. Vista DVD's just use UDF really, the ISO9660 part is purely there for making it bootable and that file system just contains a readme.txt file saying you need an OS capable of reading UDF to access the files on the disc. When you select UDF only in Imgburn and make the disc bootable, it does exactly the same thing.

Options to disable options... now why didn't I think of that?!

ok, that helps narrow it down. Now I really need you to capture exactly what happens from the moment you put the disc in until the 5 - 10 minute wait is over and it starts working again. So load the program without a disc in the drive, press F8 to enable I/O debug mode and then insert the disc. Leave it until you get control back and then save the log to a file and attach it in your next post - or email it to the support email address (look in the program's about box)