LIGHTNING UK!

It pretty much always comes down to the same things - a combination of bad drive, bad media, bad firmware and finally incorrect write speed. Only when all those 4 are working in harmony will you get decent burns.

Try the 103D firmware http://ftp.us.dell.com/rmsd/103D-1.zip Then if that doesn't work, ditch those DL discs and get some 2.4x Verbatim ones instead.

Is 4x the only speed you've tried? Slower doesn't always mean better with these new drives, they're optimised for speed!

That drive is really not up the to job of burning those discs properly (note the 1x, 2.4x write speeds), it's probably using a default write stratagy and producing a disc of questionable quality. That said, if it works, at least the spindle isn't totally useless. You'll just need other discs if you want to burn on your Sony drive.

You really need to direct this issue to LiteOn now. The command used to set the L0 data zone capacity (i.e. the layer break) is not supposed to return control to the program until it's actually finished doing it. Perhaps you could try the firmware I pointed out? You can actually reply in that cdfreaks thread and have a chance at talking to 'Wind' who is a liteon employee I believe, and the one actually working on the firmware. If there's an issue I'm sure he'll fix it. Out of interest, even when you get that error pop up, if you leave it for 30 seconds (or more?), does hitting 'Retry' work? It's not anything vital anyway.

You should burn with 'Verify' enabled so the program can check everything matches up. After that, test the burnt disc in the PC. Does it play? If so and it still doesn't work in your standalone, try another standalone (or games console?).

There's a 'GUIDES' forum - that's probably a good place to start! You'll notice it's linked in: 1. The big bright red area at the top of the forum. 2. In my signature.

What drive did you get? Post the log from a recent burn with it. Please and thank you

I can't really see as you have any choice. If it fails again, they might aswell all be classed as coasters anyway - your drive seems to have problems with them and you'll need to buy some better ones (Verbatim / Taiyo Yuden).

http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=2396 Try getting some Verbatim/Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD-R (TYG02) media or perhaps some Verbatim 8x DVD+R (MCC-003) discs.

Ok so going by your posts, you say you've tried it at 6x and 2.4x. 2.4x isn't a supported speed hence it's really 6x all over again. Have you actually it at the rated 16x (or even 12x) ?

Were you in Write mode when you copied + pasted that text dvdburn0r? I ask this because it's not listing any supported write speeds for the media.

Yes, a single 4GB file WITHIN the ISO file, not the ISO file itself.

Please copy + paste everything from the info panel on the right within the main ImgBurn window when you've got one of your blanks in the drive.

If you look on the 'Bootable Disc' tab within ImgBurn's Build mode you'll see an option called 'Create Boot Image'. You can use that to save the one from the original disc to a file on your hdd and then use the file + the info added to the log window during its creation to fill out the fields on that tab. Just change the drop down box to point to your cdrom drive (with the original xp cd in it) and click the blue floppy disc 'Save' button.

In your christmas stocking... well, once santa has dropped it off it will be.

Next time that 'not enough space' box comes up, press CTRL+C and it'll copy the text on it to your clipboard, then CTRL+V (paste) it into your reply. It doesn't make sense that the info on the right says there's 700mb free and yet you're still getting the warning from a 540mb image.

You need the bootimage off the original, just add it (and the other info) on the 'Bootable Disc' tab (which is a sub-tab of the 'Advanced' one). In fact, if you search the forum I'm pretty sure someone's done this and explained what's required.

The errors come from the drive so the software shouldn't even come into it. The drive is simply reporting that it's having trouble writing to the media (hence the 'Write Error' error code) so really it should be some issue between the drive, firmware and the media itself.

You realise that test mode doesn't actually write anything on the disc yeah? If you're burning 500mb, there would be no problem with that media, the program clearly knows there's 700mb free space.

Try the drive in another PC too if you can. If you're saying a disc from a different spindle of discs worked ok, maybe you just got a bad batch?

An ISO has no concept of a layer break. That's the whole point in the .DVD or .MDS files - they are the files that contain this info. Without them the DL ISO is just a big SL image.

Test mode doesn't actually burn anything - hence it's not a test of if the drive can write to the disc or not. What I'd probably do here is try changing the 'Write Type' to Incremental as some picky drives that aren't quite 100% will sometimes respond to one write type better than the other. You could also try cleaning the drive if you've not already done so.

Try cleaning the drive, that's about all you can do if you're already using the best/latest of everything.

NOTE: This Guide only applies to ImgBurn 2.4.0.0+ and is for burning a *proper* Audio CD (typically 80 minutes worth of audio) that's playable in any standalone CD player. If you want to burn MP3 files for playback in an MP3 ready CD player, just add the files in Build mode and ignore this guide. ImgBurn's ability to burn Audio CD's is currently based around the well known 'CUE' (as in 'BIN + CUE') image file format. To burn music files (MP3 etc) you first need to create a CUE file. Top Tip: If you already have a CUE file you should be following this guide instead - http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=61 The most direct method of doing this involves first switching to 'Write' mode. To do this, click the 'Mode' menu at the top and then click 'Write'. Then click the 'Create CUE File...' button. Top Tip: This is probably the easiest way, especially if you intend on burning the disc there and then. OR you can do it by clicking the 'Tools' menu and then selecting 'Create CUE File'. You'll then be presented with the screen shown below. Next, click on the top right 'Browse for a file...' button. The familiar 'Open File' dialog box will then appear. When you've located your files and selected them, just click the 'OK' button. Top Tip: You can also just use drag and drop from an Explorer type window. Once you've added your files the window should look something like this... If you want to configure the 'PreGap' / 'CD-TEXT' options for your tracks, select each track in turn and change the settings until your heart is content! Note: ImgBurn currently supports reading 'Tag' data from APE, Flac, MP3, OGG, WMA and WV files. Note 2: Whilst most standalone CD players support reading CD-TEXT from a CD, software players do not (they rely on an Internet database). You can use a plug-in called 'WMPCDText' to get Windows Media Player reading CD-TEXT from the disc properly. Alternatively if you want to do them all in one go, highlight the appropriate 'Session' object in the tree and do it that way. Along the same lines, highlight the 'Disc' object in the tree if you want to configure the top level 'CD-TEXT' information - this is where you'd specify the album name/title (as opposed to the track name/title). Depending on how you like to work, you might want to check the 'Add To Write Queue When Done' box here. By doing so, you won't then have to load it manually when you've switched to 'Write' mode and are ready to burn. When you're done, click the 'OK' button and you'll be prompted to save your new CUE file. Type in a name for the file and click 'Save'. If you took the easy route earlier (via the button in 'Write' mode), you can probably just click the big 'Write' button to burn your audio compliation to disc! OR you can simply follow the 'How to write an image file to a disc with ImgBurn' guide to burn your new CUE file just like any other image file.