paul48

Thanks for that advice, will get a cleaning disc. Your reply clashed with my adding "Re. firmware update from the site you mention, 2 q: is flash upgrade near 100% riskfree? might Dell cite my updating firmware as excuse for not replacing the drive, should they ever respond ? - I see from googling that drive, Dell have frequently swopped out the Philips for NEC or Pioneer for other customers, but I did not find any blog specifically citing the above drive having this problem, other than Laptop drives not being as good." Any thoughts on that, also the frequent gen refs to laptops not being good at burning discs ?

I saw you had a new release, but thought unlikely to be your software at fault as my probs occured with the original Sonic supplied by Dell. Looking at your other points, no I have not applied the SP3 toWinXP, currently trying to decide on a 'freeware' backup program (thinking to install 'Amanda') to save all user data before altering my system. I see that reinstalled WinXP won't read .nfo (MSInfo docs), and thought to run 'sfc /scannow', but see it asks for my SystemDisc... maybe best install a backup program now, backup to ext HD,then 'repair' whatever WinXP needs. Then can apply SP3. No I haven't used a 'Cleaner Disc', not sure what to ask for in the shops - will investigate.. is there a particular type of Cleaner Disc I should look for? Re. firmware update from the site you mention, 2 q: is flash upgrade near 100% riskfree? might Dell cite my updating firmware as excuse for not replacing the drive, should they ever respond ? - I see from googling that drive, Dell have frequently swopped out the Philips for NEC or Pioneer for other customers, but I did not find any blog specifically citing the above drive having this problem, other than Laptop drives not being as good.

Is the problem due to my Dell Inspiron 640m/Philips SDVD8820_AD15 hardware, or software, or my not using correct settings ? I recently installed Imgburn 2.4.4.0 and like the simple user menu very much. Initially used just the 1st icon: Write image file to disc, as I thought that should be the simplest of the 2 burning options. When I burn a Video to DVD-R, the resulting disk will play in 1 standalone Philips DVD Player, but NOT in other standalone DVD players When I burn to DVD-RW or DVD+RW, ImgburnLog indicates no problem UNTIL it reaches VERIFY, at which point it fails, tries to format the disc but fails. Tried various media, including Philips DVD+RW but no improvement. The varied DVD-R media is normally readable in my machine - but the whole point of my writing to disc is so OTHERS can! Occasionally, the Dell Inspiron/Philips DVD combination fails to Play even factory pressed DVD Films. The default Sonic DVD burn software that came pre-installed by Dell also had this problem, but can no longer reproduce that, as the HD failed, so losing all Dell preinstalled software. Although laptop bought with '2 yr International Warranty' in UK for use in Brazil/travel, delivered late with faulty 'enhanced' screen. told by Dell Brasil, Inspiron Warranty doesn't work in Brasil. No response to from day#1 to the technical/warranty issues from either Dell's UK, Brasil or USA offices. As the spec of the machine says it can write DVD-+RW I am mystified as to why it never could, and also why so few DVD-R's I burn't, are even readable in other PC's. When I first bought the laptop using the Sonic, I wrote at 'Max' speed. But since using Imgburn I have set the Write speed to 4x. I reinstalled WindowsXP Pro MCE SP2 from the Dell supplied 'recovery disc', and most of the Dell drivers from their website. Any ideas on pinning down the root of the problem ? In case I have overlooked any important 'settings' I attach a LOG file of the DVD-R burn I 16:04:38 ImgBurn Version 2.4.4.0 started! I 16:04:38 Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition (5.1, Build 2600 : Service Pack 2) I 16:04:38 Total Physical Memory: 1,038,712 KB - Available: 524,276 KB I 16:04:38 Initialising SPTI... I 16:04:38 Searching for SCSI / ATAPI devices... I 16:04:38 Found 1 DVD