grampaw

What I'm referring to is, now when you update, and the setup routine asks if you want to use retain your old settings, it "remembers" the burn speed setting - 4X on all my computers. It used to revert back to "Max" when updating, even if you requested your old setting, and I wouldn't notice. So then in my advancing senility, I wouldn't notice till I'd burned a few discs at 8X or 16X, wondering why they were burning so fast. And then to further compound my confusion, more than a few times I'd mistakenly change the number of copies to 4 instead of the burn speed to 4 (the boxes are right next to each other) - then I'd sit there wondering why it burned so fast and was then asking me to insert another disc... Actually I'm not that computer illiterate - I just do stuff like updating in a hurry sometimes.

MarQu1s, The symptoms you describe (random, increasing in frequency lately, etc) sound like you may be running some other program either concurrently or before you run ImgBurn that is somehow effecting ImgBurn. You could keep a log of what other apps are running either before or during ImgBurn, and deduce what the problem might be. Or you could do like I do - always restart the computer before initializing an ImgBurn session. Lots of Luck...

Just happened to be vacationing in this little Western Cambodian jungle town last week, and lo and behold, the internet cafe I went to to check e-mail had ImgBurn software on the computers. The internet cafes in Cambodia are big on burning CDs and DVDs.

And I can't count how many internet cafes I've seen - major cities in Europe, Asia, South America, and about 20 places in Mexico. But then I'm not in them to use ImgBurn, rather to check/make travel reservations and keep up with e-mail. Strangest place - Cairo, Egypt where water pipes are next to the computers. Can't remember how we traveled before the internet...

Thanks Fordman - I do have a data backup application in mind I could use the Ritek's for. I use NTI's DVDcreator as my recording program. I'll give it a try with data backed up elsewhere... Actually, I never said I couldn't play movie DVD's using the Ritek DL media. One of my stand alone players, the $27 USD WalMart special CyberHome hooked up to small TV in the guest room, plays anything perfectly including Ritek DL movies. It's the other two players, hooked up to entertainment systems, that stumble a bit at the boundary change - usually requiring a remote FF action to continue. The Ritek DLs also seem to have occasional pixellations I seem to remember.

And ImgBurn works just fine. I used Shrink to strip the menu and trailer from an un-encrypted title (not all DVDs have CSS). Using Shrink meant there was no MDS file. ImgBurn first verified I really wanted to burn this ISO on a DL since it would fit on a SL, then gave me some strange message about the ISO not conforming to some sort of standard (I should have copied it - it's not in the log), then assigned a layer break point, and finally burned the DVD. Result was a DVD that plays fine on the stand-alone player in my entertainment system.

I bought these Riteks a while ago, on sale, and don't want to do the hassle of trying to return them. Gee, now I know why they were on sale... I'll try burning a DVD-5 on one of them tonight. Movie Junkie probably has a valid point about the order of layer burning - so I'll put ImgBurn to the test let you know how it goes.

I've read enough stuff in this forum to convince me that Ritek DL +R media are potential coasters. I've burned maybe 3 DVDs out of my spindle of 20, all I suppose classified as "successful", however with funky stuff going on at the layer break (stutter, stopping, pixellation). I switched to Verbatim DL +R media a while ago, and they seem to work perfectly. So now I have this spindle of blank Riteks I don't know what to do with. So, it just occurred to me, why not burn them as DVD-5's, i.e. only use layer 0. Anybody have any experience at this? Should I do anything special using ImgBurn? Hate to just dump this spindle...

Polopony's memory is right on - the rings, actually different colored concentric parts of the disk, is where the writer changes does a step speed change, eventually ramping up in 2X steps to whatever burn speed you selected in the ImgBurn options. Early on in the great speed race, when 8X blank media first appeared, I found that the change between 4X and 8X on the burned disk would frequently freeze a movie playback on various of my stand-alone players. I'm sure media has improved since that time, and it's probably not still a problem. However I still continue to only Burn DVDs, either SL or DL, only at 4X - I figure it's one less chance for a playback glitch....

Dell didn't give me the WinXP MCE disk with the "Scratch and Dent" package. It did, however, come with a 3 year onsite warranty (Dell classified it as a business computer) which I will use if things get too screwed up. First time I contact Dell support I'll try to get a CD, however. They only charge $10 more with an original order. So I do a lot of restore points when loading up new software. I also generally don't uninstall unless it's necessary. I don't really care if it's a clean system, I only care if the system works. Roxio software is a real problem since it generally neither uninstalls nor updates correctly - so the plan there is to just ignore it.

Why would one want to abort the test burn if it takes a full 14 minutes to complete the abort process? Seems to me it would take signicantly less time at an 8X burn rate to just complete the test.

The two "E" and "W" messages disappeared and the log looks normal now. ImgBurn now finds the DVD writer instantly. I was going to do the recommeded diagnostic to find out why the DVD writer had a delayed recognition, however, I wanted to first setup the computer with my preferred software. The computer came with Sonic MyDVD LE loaded, which includes a Roxio stuff - DLA packet-writing app could be the problem. Anyway, I figured I'd leave the Sonic stuff on for now. I'm not a Roxio fan - buggy and intrusive software, nor do I care for Nero - bloated and incredibly bizarre interface. I like NTI CD/DVD Maker verion 7, - nice interface for music, photos, video, and even shrinks DVD files. And their packet writer, FileCD, is not intrusive. So I loaded that software, and LOL, some setting must have gotten changed somewhere, since now ImgBurn finds the DVD writer immediately.

New (actually Scratch and Dent) Computer from Dell - loaded with tons of software, most of which I have no clue what is, so I'm methodically uninstalling. And of course adding the software I'm familar with, such as ImgBurn. Anyway, when I run ImgBurn, I get the following message. I just ignore it since the burns are normal and verify. I'm just curious why I get the message. Dosn't matter if I first start ImgBurn, then put DVD blank in, or do it in the reverse order, I always get this same message. I 16:53:05 ImgBurn Version 1.2.0.0 started! I 16:53:05 Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition (5.1, Build 2600 : Service Pack 2) I 16:53:05 Initialising SPTI... I 16:53:05 Searching for SCSI / ATAPI devices... E 16:53:10 CreateFile Failed! - Device: '\\.\CdRom0' E 16:53:10 Reason: The device is not ready. W 16:53:10 Errors were encountered when trying to access a drive. W 16:53:10 This drive will not be visible in the program. I 16:53:10 Found 1 DVD?RW!

I'm just curious - does the ImgBurn finalise polling logic have a counter that eventually says "Ok this finalising isn't going to happen, so time to bail" ? Reason I ask is I had one old 1GHz P3 machine with Win98 (now out of commission with a dead MoBo battery) that once in a great while would decide not to use the software buffer, using instead only the device buffer when writing. These disks were not real playable, so I learned to just abort when I saw this happening. When you abort, it finalises, and I noticed this would take usually about a half hour or so. I had to finalise because if I stopped ImgBurn, the computer would lock up, requiring a reboot. Anyway, I've always been curious as to whether ImgBurn (and it's predecessor) really did finalise or just aborted the finalise.

Thanks LIGHTNING UK! - This fix works fine on my old P3 computer running Win98SE...