dbminter

Actually, I can't take a picture of what's left. The battery cover broke off my camera while I was trying to swap out the dead rechargables for fresh recharables. Without the battery cover, two battery terminals won't complete poles. Therefore, the camera won't work. It's irreparable, so, I have to get a new one. Who knows if I'll have any cake left by then. This camera was a cheap piece of HP junk anyway. Only reason I got it 10 years ago was because it was on sale and had a scanner given away with it. I've hated using it ever since.

It's partially eaten. I'll take a picture of what's left.

Got another one of those Death By Chocolate cakes!

To be honest, I don't think I've ever used Quick Erase that much. I may use it to Quick Erase a disc that won't write or verify properly, but, I usually end up having to Full Erase them anyway.

You shouldn't ever really encounter a need to do a Quick Erase manually. When using rewritable media, a Quick Erase will be performed if there is existing data on the target media when ImgBurn burns the media. I do the occasional Full Erase if for whatever reason a write to a rewritable media fails for whatever particular reason after a Quick Erase automatically performed by ImgBurn. I Full Erase it and then burn it again to retest the media. If it fails again, the disc has reached the end of its usable life as far as I'm concerned and I junk it. On the 1st, I had to get rid of about 5 or 6 DVD-RW's that just wouldn't write correctly anymore.

It could very well be the age of the drive. I'd kill for a drive that still worked after 5 years! My last Optiarc I just replaced after just under a year. My past Optiarcs usually lasted about 2 years.

About the only gotcha I can say you might have with any random model of USB drive is that it might have a semaphore timeout issue with ImgBurn. This is caused by a combination of certain USB controllers on your computer's motherboard and the USB birdge used inside the USB drive. There's not a known issue around this, as far as I can tell. The only real solutions are to replace the controller, which means replacing the motherboard, or replacing the bridge in the burner, which also means replacing the burner. You could going the route of buying a USB enclosure for a burner and then burning an internal burner to put inside it. As far as good enclosures go that don't have the semaphore timeout issue, I couldn't tell you, sorry. As for a known good USB burner that doesn't have the semaphore timeout issue, I've had a Sony DRXU-820A for several years. In fact, I only need to replace it because the eject button no longer works, though software eject still works. In fact, this is because the drive was dropped and it still burns and verifies fine. The only other thing I could caution about is not avoid getting a slim line USB burner. From what I've read on the forums, they're not worth the quality for the price. BUT, it seems companies mostly only make them because they're cheaper and people will buy them.

Does anyone have the LiteOn eHAU424-08 USB DVD writer? In particular, I'm wondering if there's a semaphore timeout issue with this drive. Thanks!

Yes, but this was doing this with 2.5.6.0. I believe it's been doing it since September, when I installed the new Seagate USB HD. I believe 2.5.6.0 Gold was out then? If not, whatever the beta version was then and any subsequent betas.

Also, discovered something during Verify, which I would guess would happen to writes, too? When it gets to 99%, Verify just stops, waiting for me to Retry or Cancel at the dialog. If I select Retry, the Verify then continues on from pausing and almost immediately ends the Verify successfully.

Ever since I've gotten this new Seagate USB HD and have tried burning images that are stored on it, I get the same "error" of a Retry. It always happens at the same percentage completed, 96%, on both Writes and Verifies. The dialog returns: "Failed to read from file: <File name and location> Reason: The parameter is incorrect. Retry Cancel buttons." The write or verify continues on even when this window appears. I just select Retry and it continues on, with no error, into the Verify, which returns the same window at the same percentage completed. I just select Retry again it continues on with no error. Is this something that should concern me?

It also doesn't matter what version of Firefox you're running. I discovered there was a newer Firefox than my current version. For whatever reason, automatic updates have not worked for my Firefox since Version 7. Once again, too many revisions in a row syndrome. Anyway, found the newer versions of ZA and FF and tried them out again with my usual rigorous tests. Sure enough, it does not matter what version of FF you have. I didn't expect it would matter as this error was NOT present in ZA 9 and is in ZA 10, meaning it's ZA's fault. Wouldn't be the first time they screwed up ZA. Back with like version 8, there were like 3 revisions where if I installed them, all of my USB drives would disappear!

Version 10 is really fucked up! I discovered it wasn't no Internet connection that was breaking Firefox with ZA 10. It was restoring a disk partition that ZA 10 didn't like! What happens is if you restore a Macrium Reflect backup with Version 5's rescue media off of a thumb drive, then Firefox REFUSES to open at all with ZA resident! This does NOT happen with Version 9 of ZA, so, the problem is ZA 10 itself.

So, I can just ignore setting the Seamless Layer Break option each time if I use a .BUP of .IFO file for the layer break on a DVD Video burn? I am guessing, then, I won't have to worry about layer break pauses since it's not a video stream?

I'm looking to replace my Sony USB burner because its eject button no longer worked after it was dropped. The drive itself still performs, but, the tray can only be ejected via software now. I only found 2 I could venture trying, because all the rest of the USB's are mostly slim line drives, which I've read on here are pretty much crap. But, companies mostly only make them because they're cheap and people will buy them, regardless. So, one of these, the cheapest one, is the HP 1394 USB burner. I was just wondering if anyone else had this drive and if they did if they encountered semaphore time out issues with it?

I notice that sometimes in the list of places to place a layer break that .BUP files are choices. What exactly would selecting one of them and selecting Seamless Layer Break do? I wouldn't see a need for Seamless on a .BUP file since they're just backups of .IFO files. But, as I've said, I know little about DVD's.

I did do a search and discovered before I posted one of your posts where one shouldn't choose Ignore Layer Break Options if burning a DVD Video to DVD+R DL. I was just curious as to what it did. And I won't use the option.

What exactly does the Ignore Layer Break Options do? I don't know much about DVD's and burning dual layer DVD Video content, but, doesn't there need to a layer break, even if it is seamless?

Even better that it apparently resembles BASIC. It's been 20 years but, I did take BASIC classes.

I've been giving ZoneAlarm 10 a throw around with various tests, and I'd like to pass along my review. I played with the latest build, ZoneAlarm 10.1.079.000, and I have to say give it a pass until Version 11. Too many things that were broken or CAUSED other things to break. For instance, unless you go through a lot of hoops and disable a service of ZA, Alcohol disc emulation stops working. The GUI won't even load properly because the virtual drives aren't there. They show up as physical drives in the software. My big deal break was when it broke Firefox. I did NOT install the FF plugin and it STILL broke Firefox. Firefox just refused to load if there was no network connection. What would happen when FF was closed and attempted to reopen, it simply would never open. Trying to kill off the application in Task Manager returned the error that the application was unable to terminate. Nothing fixed it except a drive image restore. Unloading ZA, uninstalling ZA, restarting the PC. Nothing would fix ZA's breaking of FF 8.01. So, for these reasons, I've gotta say pass on ZoneAlarm 10 and I'll wait for 11 before I engage another free trial.

AKA the spawn of Satan!

Didn't know that was an option in VirtualDub. Thanks!

I'm looking for a program, preferably free that will do things like WinBatch does, like send keystrokes to applications. My old version of WinBatch does not work under Windows 7 x64.

I have an AVI file that I want to save each individual frame of as a separate graphics file for a project I want to tinker around with. Anyone know of something that will do that, preferably free. The only way I've thought of doing it would take too long: to use VirtualDub to copy each frame to the clipboard and paste the data into Windows Paint and saving that file as a PNG. Thanks!

Discovered the Autoexec line in the dosbox .conf file in the most recent PC World. I was hoping to just have a shortcut or setting that could redirect the file to somewhere other than the Windows partition structure. That switch you mentioned does the trick. Thanks!