Hi all...
First post, so be gentle.
Up until very recently, I was burning single and double/dual layer media with no problems whatsoever. All of a sudden one problem came up, which was very soon followed by many.
I'm on Windows XP SP3, using a Pioneer DVR-110D (firmware 1.41), which is on an Nvidia nforce2 ATA controller (v2.6 [driver version 5.10.2600.446]). I've tried updating nvidia drivers, going back to an older version, switching to the standard MS one, etc etc, but all are giving me the same issues. That said, it's the current config that 'was' previously working.
I've updated to imgburn 2.4.4.0, I've tried using SPTI and Nero's ASPI, but still no go.
I always use Verbatim media - be it single or DL. I was using MIS DL's, but can't seem to find them anymore, so have now started using MII's.
Basically the first problem I noticed was when burning single layer discs - the burn would complete, it would then cycle before verifying, and then continuously keep saying the device wasn't ready, and prompt me to cycle again. After umpteen retries I would eventually give up trying to verify, which would all but freeze my pc. If I later manually verified, it would pass. This is still the case now - burning works, but now occasionally produces a coaster (which was a very rare thing before), and verification has to be done manually.
Onto DL media. As I said, I'm now using MII verbatim's. When I was using MIS's I never had any problems, but given my other issues I'm putting that down to coincidence?! In the last two days I've gone though 17 (!!) DL discs, with not one complete burn. 10 of them were 2.4x rated (MKM-001-00), and the remaining 7 were 8x rated (MKM-003-00). I've tried both types at various burn speeds, and again none have worked.
With the MKM-001's I was getting to about 15% of the burn (at most), the device buffer would then drop to 0% and every few seconds jump to 100% and back down to 0% - meanwhile the write rate would hover at about 0.4x. This would pretty much continue until I lost patience and canceled the burn. With the MKM-003's it's a similar story, except this time it gets to 50% of the burn, starts the 2nd layer, the device buffer drops to 0%, and from thereon it's the same thing as before.
Unfortunately I have no other pc's or drives to try, so I'm now completely out of ideas. To say I'm pulling my hair out would be an understatement.... It's a miracle I haven't put my foot through my pc already!
The only thing I can think of now is to get hold of a new[er] drive. I was thinking of getting a DVR-116D. I know my 110D is old now, but I'm still finding it hard to believe that it could've just gone from being completely fine one day to almost useless the next.
Fwiw, this is the log of my last two burn attempts....
I 16:17:53 ImgBurn Version 2.4.2.0 started!I 16:17:53 Microsoft Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600 : Service Pack 3) I 16:17:53 Total Physical Memory: 1,048,048 KB - Available: 558,132 KB I 16:17:53 Initialising ASPI... I 16:17:53 WNASPI32.DLL - Nero WnAspi32 - Win32 Nero Aspi Library - Version 2.0.1.74 I 16:17:53 Searching for SCSI / ATAPI devices... I 16:17:53 Found 1 DVD-ROM and 1 DVD