LIGHTNING UK!

Yup, that's the whole idea behind the 'Important' bit in that post in the FAQ. Windows lies.

That's a warning and it means exactly what it says. Your D: drive is formatted using the FAT32 file system and you can't store files larger than 4GB in size on drives using that file system. Convert it to NTFS to get around that limitation. 'Device not ready (medium not present)' means you don't have a disc in the drive or the drive doesn't support the media you've put in it.

Correct. SPTI is default and it's what I use day in, day out. Hardware devices in the PC are assigned classes. One of those classes is a 'CdRom' class and it allows access to all of the optical drives in the machine. They're accessed via names like CdRom1, CdRom2, CdRom3 etc. If you don't use that then it goes via drive letters C:\, D:\, E:\ etc. It wouldn't make any difference really unless you have weird drives or ones that don't have drive letters.

Because of the verify errors it can introduce.

Going by the screenshot you posted above, it's already set to DVD-ROM. If you've changed it since then, change it back. You should also leave the layer break setting on 'Calculate Optimal'. The value will be read from the .DVD file and that value should always be present anyway.

Nope I'm afraid not.

A pressed DL disc is not the same as a burnt one. One working doesn't automatically mean the other will too. You might like to double check your drive it booktyping the DVD+R DL's to DVDROM, I think that drive does it automatically but it's a good idea to check. Does the DVD+R DL fail at the LB in the same way the DVD-R DL did?

Please post the info from the log window as you see it.

Of course, I own most of them Yes Optiarc ones use the NEC commands - but you can tell this for yourself because they work! lol Personally I wouldn't touch a thing and just leave it on DVD-ROM. That's the best setting.

It seems odd that they'd tell you NOT to booktype to DVD-ROM?! I wonder if that's a mistake in their guide? As the setting you're changing is JUST for DVD+R DL media, 'Normal' means to leave it at DVD+R DL and 'DVD-ROM' (which appears to be default anyway) of course sets it to 'DVD-ROM'.

Sony don't really make their own drives, they rebrand them. Find the real OEM and use the appropriate tab. The tabs are for the 'type' of commands the drive supports, serveral 'brands' can use the same type.

The first (and only) error you post was due to copy protection on the discs. If you're saying it's not because of that then you must have posted the wrong error - please provide us with the real one. Just remember that if you're posting a log from a failed read of a commercial DVD then we're just gonna tell you to go elsewhere again. It really doesn't make any difference that it worked before and doesn't now, it's not anything to do with ImgBurn as it wouldn't have ever read your protected discs. If you've uninstalled some other program, I'm afraid that really is your own problem and you need to figure out what it is - we cannot and will not tell you.

What you're seeing here is that the drive itself is reporting it's not ready. No program will be able to do anything with the drive until it manages to initialise the disc properly.

Are the ones you've burnt coming up with that error too? Are you sure the discs are the same? You might have some from the same brand but they use a different dye to the others and the drive doesn't support the dye on these newer ones. All you can really do is check for firmware updates and try cleaning the drive.

That's 16x media and your drive is only showing it as 4x. As such I'd have to say the drive can't really cope with it. Try and get some 8x stuff instead, you should find it more compatible.

LOL

When I said 'running', I didn't really mean bits you'd loaded manually, I mean all the rubbish that sits down in the system tray near the clock. MotiveSB.exe is nothing to do with ImgBurn. Google it and maybe you'll find what it belongs to and then figure out the root cause of the problem. ImgBurn in itself doesn't run slowly so it's some other piece of software you've loaded that's not playing nicely. It would be that piece of software that has the problem / conflict with ImgBurn, not ImgBurn with it. To find the problem you should also try disabling / uninstalling all your antivirus / adware / spyware programs, reboot and try again. You might also like to run a tried and tested one to remove any dodgy ones you have/had installed. I use SpyBot Search and Destroy, along with Ad-Aware 2007. They're both free.

What else are you running on the PC? Is it the ImgBurn process that's running at 100% when you say it's slow? Normally this kinda thing comes down to antivirus / spyware detection program but can't recall ever hearing someone say the program was running slowly ALL the time (normally it's just as it loads).

Ok so what you need to do now is Google 'convert wmv to dvd video' or something similar. Something like ConvertXtoDVD might work.

No, you're the one that needs to check again.

You have general issues with your machine, it's best you fix those before blaming programs. Check your motherboard BIOS is up-to-date, check your motherboard/ide drivers are up-to-date. Check the firmware on your drives is up-to-date. Follow the post in the FAQ about resetting DMA (i.e. uninstall your IDE controller from within Device Manager). Failing all that, reinstall your operating system.

What format is the 'data' one? i.e. what files are currently on the disc?

You might see 24x from the start but it's not a true reflection of the speed they're working at. I could lie and make it say MAX all the time if you like?! (just kidding, I'd never do that really)

Being made by plextor themselves, I'd say it's about as good as you can get (implementations in other programs are based on guess work). There are also loads more tests beyond the PIPO one that you can do with it.

Plextor stopped making their PIPO commands 'public'. You need to use PlexTools for scanning.