ThaCrip

I figure at the very least, it's still the best alternative to hard drives for long term data storage at a reasonable price, at least DVD recordable. what puts me off BD-R is initial costs and it's a bit less time proven as CD/DVD is and a lot less people have drives that can read BluRay discs where as just about anyone with a drive that can read optical media will read CD/DVD. so as long as someone does not have many TB's of data to backup, standard DVD is pretty good for a more limited amount (like say less than 1TB or so) of data storage. I don't burn much to CD/DVD anymore but I still do for a limited amount of higher importance data backup.

I just generally manipulate basic audio data with Foobar2000. Foobar2000 is my 'go to' program for listening to music (FLAC/MP3/AAC/Opus etc) and basic conversion (i.e. lossless (FLAC etc) to lossy(MP3/AAC etc)). it even works on Linux (setup through Wine) even though it's a Windows program. but it just depends on how picky someone is with keeping the copy as close/identical to original as possible. but generally speaking once you get audio in FLAC format you can keep these files for long term storage since the audio is identical to the actual audio CD (assuming it was ripped from a actual audio CD in the first place). so if you burn a basic audio CD using these files, the audio quality will be the same as your original audio CD. but for more audiophile/picky types of people... EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is the standard people use to make a proper copy of general music CD's. but even with this... in the real world, there is basically no noticeable differences here in terms of the audio quality of the music, assuming your CD drive read the music data half way decently in the first place when making your WAV/FLAC files. like say you ripped a song to WAV/FLAC format with a random program and then used EAC to do the same, there is no noticeable difference in audio quality since it's a lossless format at the end of the day. I guess with EAC it might be less likely a read error would occur on the disc, but still, a typical audio CD and typical CD/DVD drive should be able to read these decently to where this is not likely to be a issue. personally if I was to rip my original audio CD's, I would probably use EAC to get the basic WAV/FLAC data off of them, but then dump the excess details that the cue file stores with gaps etc which is not really needed anyways unless you are more of a perfectionist. but I think for the most part there is not many whole albums that just about every song is good on them. so when I burn audio CD's from time to time in fairly recent memory I just tend to make custom CD's using FLAC files as sound quality will be as good as original CD anyways since it's a lossless format at the end of the day. p.s. but for a basic copy, I would assume what dbminter said summed it up.

While I am just one person, all of my drives still work and nearly all are still in use installed in either my primary PC or backup computer. but in all honestly, I don't burn stuff regularly anymore, but a little here and there, mostly occasional high importance data backup or a standard AUDIO CD (which ill sometimes overburn a bit past 80min if I need to) from time-to-time and I got plenty of burnable media that I am sure ill be set for the foreseeable future. I am not sure how many discs my CD/DVD burners have burned on each burner but I would guess some of my older CD/DVD burners are probably over a hundred discs at least and could be hundreds of discs over the years, especially if you count burning CD-RW/DVD+RW types of discs as a burn. so as a ball park figure, 100-500 burns on my more heavier used burners. but any burners that seen any real use from me probably have a minimum of 50-100 burns on them. I first got into CD burning in I am pretty sure it was 1998 as it was a Memorex burner, I think 2x2x6 speed, but I never kept this for long etc as I don't even remember what happened to it but I suspect it was left in a old computer (Pentium 133Mhz) I eventually got rid of at some point (because I know in those days my first computer in general was 1995, then 1996, then 2000, then 2001, then 2006, then 2012 is the gist of all of the desktop computers I ever owned). but putting this aside (as I think I might have temporarily used that Memorex 2x2x6 and might have swapped it for something similar briefly back in the day) I basically still have all of my other CD/DVD burners as shown below... My two CD burners I still have... -HP 8x4x32 CD-RW (IDE) drive which has a mfg date of May 2000. I even played with this a bit in the last year or two by connecting it to one of those external SATA/IDE to USB3 devices and it worked with ImgBurn. but this burner basically collects dust even though it does work as I tested one of my CD-RW discs on it. -Liteon 24102b (24x10x40x) CD-RW (IDE) drive. has a Dec 2001 mfg date I think which probably means I have had it since 2002, so 20 years now. I would say this was my first quality CD burner I got and the last one I bought to. I remember this could copy 'SafeDisc v2' copy protection in the old days. I have only owned 3 DVD burners and all still work... -Liteon 1673s (IDE) (my first DVD burner). I got this in 2005. -Sony Optiarc 7240s (SATA) (my second DVD burner). I think this is from 2009 or so. -Liteon iHAS-324B (SATA) (my third DVD burner). I think this is from 2011 or so. but out of the three DVD burners the first two most likely have the most burned discs on them as I mainly bought the iHAS-324B for XBox360 backup years ago and only fairly recently started to use it to burn certain discs I have (new old stock of Verbatim 8x (MCC 003)) since it seems to be the best of the three DVD burners I got on these media. but the Verbatim DVD-R and DVD+R 16x rated discs I had quite a few years ago (and still have much of these discs left from roughly a decade ago without checking) burns well on the 7240s and I would assume the iHAS-324B to and maybe even fairly well on the old drive from 2005. but I know some discs I have the drive from 2005 is the worst burn quality as shown by KProbe. basically the 24102b/1673s is still in my backup computer (since it's got IDE ports) and the 7240s/iHAS-324B are in my primary PC.

Yeah, I understand. personally I use Firefox as my primary browser but I have Chromium installed as a backup. p.s. but for whatever it's worth, Chrome is the dominate browser in general as on the desktop(or laptop) about 66% of the planet uses this according to market share statistics online. Yeah, I see what you mean since the only more major components you took from the old setup are basically the CPU/RAM as the rest is basic stuff and should not really matter as it should be okay. This makes me wonder if this is possibly the root cause of your problem. because if the hard drive is not getting any power, the motherboard won't see the hard drive. I would definitely try connecting STANDARD SATA power (from your PSU(power supply)) and data cables(standard SATA cable) to the hard drive just to ensure this is not a issue and then boot to BIOS and see if it see's the hard drive or not. That RAM testing program basically tells you the health of the RAM. basically it should find no errors if the RAM is good. if it even finds one error, the RAM could be faulty (at least in that setup). Yeah, I think there is a way to install Linux to a flash drive and run the entire OS from that, while it being able to save your settings etc to. I just never bothered to learn how to do this much though since I naturally just prefer to install it to a HDD or SSD for general usage. but a quick look online the following article should get you pretty close to installing Mint to a USB stick so you can run the entire OS from it (withit being able to save files etc)... https://www.tecmint.com/install-linux-os-on-usb-drive/ it mentions to disconnect any hard drives to it does not interfere with them, but in your case you won't have to worry about this since you don't have any visible hard drives anyways. but it 'may' tweak your bootable USB stick, so if possible I would make a backup bootable USB stick just in case it messes with your current one or install Mint from a DVD disc to a USB stick you can use.

Yeah, it's your call as neither is a bad choice as Cinnamon is okay to. but Xfce is a little lighter on resources and is probably a safer overall choice in my opinion for older hardware (maybe even in general). but if you are happy with Cinnamon, you can stick with that as the basic function of the OS is the same either way besides some level of differences with how the interface is etc. but the core function of things is basically the same. p.s. another reason to dump Windows 7 is even Google Chrome is dropping support of it's browser on Windows 7 in about Feb 2023. so while one can continue to use it on some level after this, security flaws in relation to this basically won't be fixed. so all the more reason to switch to Linux, especially if your computer does not support the free upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 which still worked the last I checked, IF your hardware is supported. Just to confirm... you completely disconnected the DEAD hard drive and then you connected both the SATA POWER AND SATA DATA CABLES (so two cables in total will be connected to your hard drive) to a known working hard drive you have, correct? because you need both of these (SATA power AND data cable) connected for the motherboard (and hard drive) to have a chance to see it. if this fails, I would try all four of your SATA ports on the motherboard just to see if any of them show the hard drive connected (use this general test in combination with booting the Linux Mint bootable USB stick you created to see if it can see your hard drive(more instructions below)). also, in relation to the above with the hard drives... try booting into the Linux Mint bootable USB stick (like boot up to the desktop) you created and see if that can see your hard drive (one of your known working hard drives) under the 'Disks' program (if it's there it will be listed on the left side of that program). because if this see's your hard drive, I suspect Mint will install okay to it. it would not be a bad idea to clear your BIOS to it's default settings. p.s. optionally, but is not free so I don't know if it's worth your time or not, is you can potentially buy one of those SATA controller cards online (you would have to find what type of PCI slots are on your motherboard as my board from 2006 has the older stuff in it as it does not have the more modern-ish small PCI-E x1 etc ports) and assuming your PCI/PCI-E etc port still functions normally (even assuming the onboard SATA ports are totally dead) this might be a way to connect a hard drive and install Linux to it. but I would understand if you don't want to attempt it since it costs money and I can't be certain it will work. but has a decent chance to revive things so you can get working SATA ports again (assuming your onboard ones are totally dead). but after looking around online I 'think' I have found what your motherboard looks like etc and it does appear to have at least a couple of the older standard PCI slots. either way, the quality on these cheap add-on cards may be so-so as it could last years or die not all that long after use as I bought a couple in the year 2020 and one that was pretty much dirt cheap ($8 or so) started acting up not all that long after using it (probably within a year off the top of my head) while the other, which I got a deal on a used one for about half price of new (I paid $12.50 when it was normally about $25 at the time brand new) is still working well today in my main PC which that SATA add-on card is now over 2 years+ old at this point and I have no problems with it on Linux as it's automatically detected by the Linux OS etc. the particular add-on card I have is a 4-port SATA PCI-E x1 under "I/O Crest" brand (with Marvell 9215 chip etc) so my motherboard basically now has a total of 8 SATA ports instead of just the 4 that the motherboard has by default and I actually run my boot drive (Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD SATA) from it on Linux Mint as it just automatically detects it, so no driver setup needed. my motherboard ports are SATAII but the add-on card is SATAIII. but I don't think you can buy this particular card for your old computer since I don't think your old board has support for PCI-E x1 slots etc as you would likely need the older style PCI type of card. You can do a RAM check using the free RAM checking program from a bootable CD or USB stick... https://memtest.org/ that tests to see if your RAM is faulty etc. I would do a minimum of one full pass as that might take a hour or so to complete. but if you got the time I would let it run overnight with say 5-10 passes to see if it finds any errors or not. but obviously if it finds errors early on I would not bother running it overnight. but if it does find errors you can potentially remove certain RAM chips and try again to see if it goes way etc. you could even try clearing the BIOS and seeing if that helps. there might be a jumper on the motherboard. but I think if you just leave it unplugged for a while with the CR2032 battery removed that might be good enough to clear it. or, just simply try resetting the 'defaults' in the BIOS menu. p.s. I would play around with trying to get your SATA hard drive stuff sorted first though and if that does not work then try this RAM testing as I don't think a slightly faulty RAM chip would cause the system to not be able to see a connected hard drive.

'Cinnamon' is Mint's "main" version you could say. but Xfce is better suited for older hardware and I think is a safer overall choice in general. but in terms of basic function both are very similar. ultimately it's your choice as I don't think neither is bad. but you can't get 32bit in Mint 20 series or newer as Mint 19 series was the last one that had a 32bit ISO release (like a option of 32bit or 64bit ISO's), which I don't recommend at this point simply because support of the Mint 19.x series ends April 2023 (Mint 20.x ends April 2025, Mint 21.x ends April 2027). but in general... unless you have to run a 32bit OS (like if you have a CPU that only works with 32bit, which in your case I would be surprised if your setup does not work with 64bit), 64bit should be the default as 64bit OS's have been the norm since Windows 7 on forward as the last time a 32bit OS from Microsoft was the norm was with WinXP, which was released in 2001 (Win7 was 2009). but like I say, I would seriously look into trying another hard drive in that computer as I am fairly confident your hard drive is dead, but your computer itself is okay. in other words... getting a replacement hard drive has a decent chance to cure your problem. then you can install Mint to the hard drive and use it normally instead of from a bootable USB, as running Mint from a bootable USB stick itself is okay just for briefly testing. but a more proper way to run it is from the hard drive basically. like if you have ANY computer with a hard drive (desktop or laptop) you can temporarily remove that and plug it into this old computer just to see if the BIOS see's that a hard drive is connected (then power down and put it back into the computer it was in and resume use of it like usual). if so, I would say the odds are good just getting another hard drive (or SSD) for that setup will cure it. but what file did you download specifically? ; since you said 'cinnamon' I would assume you downloaded "linuxmint-21-cinnamon-64bit.iso"? p.s. I think if you want you can quickly try out Chromium (basically Chrome but with less junk) by loading up terminal (that black icon to the right of the Firefox icon in the bottom left corner area if your screen that looks like "$_") and issue 'sudo apt install chromium' and press enter etc. then you should be able to access 'Chromium Web Browser' from the Mint menu on the 'Internet' section or just press windows key and type 'chromium' and you will see it show up quickly there. on a bit of a side note there is a bug on Linux with Firefox (with at least some people) as the browser might hang etc (which was mentioned on the Mint forums a while ago now (I actually experienced it on my old machine from 2006 (but seems to more rarely occur, or does not occur often enough for it to be a problem on my main PC which has a i5-3550 CPU))) but if you plan on using Chrome then you don't have to worry about this being a potential factor for you anyways since that's not effected. but like I say, I would install Mint and then see how things work for your first and then go from there.

Basically dbminter pretty much bottom lined things in general with Mitsubishi/Taiyo Yuden being the safe/quality choices. with that said, for general CD-R media I got some cheap Verbatim CD-R (CMC Magnetics) and while it's not the higher quality Mitsubishi, and it works well enough, but I largely just use it for burning standard audio CD's (minimal amount for very limited amount of data) and in this case it's nice and even offers the best overburning of the discs I have owned as they will burn at least 2min15sec over the normal 80min limit. I am not sure how long these discs will last, but I suspect CD-R media in general is less picky than DVD. because doing some disc quality checks on these CMC Magnetics Verbatim CD-R's with my old Liteon 24102b CD-RW (IDE) drive, as it's the only drive I have that scan scan CD-R media properly, it's within good standards currently. but on DVD recordable media, especially if it's anything you care about long term, I would just stick to Mitsubishi/TY as a general rule, even though it's possible other media will last a rather long time to as I have a small amount of DVD discs I burned back in the 2000's decade (that's not of the Mitsubishi/TY brand) and they still scan well to this day as just checking the pictures a moment ago I saved from KProbe for my non-Mitsubishi/TY media I have one disc that was burned on Nov 5th 2005 and scanned with KProbe on March 26th 2022 and it's still showing a quality burn (PIF spike is no higher than a 2 at any point and even the PIE's are basically top notch and total PIF's are low etc). it's a "DVD+R CMC MAGM01 [CMC Magnetics Corporation]" which is probably the oldest burned DVD disc I still have, or close to it. another non-Mitsubishi/TY disc I got, while not as good of a burn quality as the MAGM01 mentioned above, it's still good enough overall as it was burned about March/April 2012 and I scanned it on May 2nd 2022 as the only a bit more concerning part is the single PIF spike of 9 and of 5 as besides those two small parts the rest tops out in the 3 or less range which is well within quality, although a very high percentage of the PIF's are 2 or less and the general PIE's (which are not as important as PIF's in general) are still well within a standard I am not worried about as that tops out at 53 (I think the official spec is somewhere over 200, meaning anything of say no higher than about 2xx is still within spec) but a good portion of the disc ain't far from what's close enough to about as good as your going to get. but given a disc I burned not all that long ago that actually failed to read data showed for a disc scan, assuming that's a good ball park estimate for failure to read the disc, I suspect this disc with the single 9 and 5 spike ain't going to be failing for the foreseeable future for general data backup. point is, while you can still get media that will last that's not of the Mitsubishi/TY brands, it's a bit more of a gamble. but what dbminter said about DVD+R DL media is all that more true as that media tends to be more picky than typical 4.7GB recordable DVD media is, so it's all the more reason to just outright avoid it unless you don't mind gambling and get it dirt cheap.

Given what you said there it sounds like your hard drive is dead (like got fried etc) is why the PC's BIOS does not see it, not that the PC hardware itself (like motherboard etc) is faulty (assuming your power supply did not fry it etc). I would try running a different hard drive on it temporarily to see if the BIOS can see it. if it can, I would imagine you can install a OS to it. assuming you don't think there is anything faulty with the PSU (power supply) you connect to it, it should be safe to test another hard drive you might have laying around (power off PC, connect SATA data/power cables, power on and check). any typical SATA hard drive will do, desktop or laptop, even a laptops 2.5" type (desktops are of the 3.5" kind) just to see if it can detect the hard drive in BIOS etc. if it can I would think the odds are you can install a OS to it and everything will be great. another thing that comes to mind that just popped into my head which MAY BE IMPORTANT IF IT APPLIES TO YOU... on your hard drive, make sure you ONLY connect ONE power connector to it as one of my old Western Digital 250GB HDD's (which I had in March 2006(it's still in use in my old computer today)) has TWO power connectors to it, the old molex kind (white plastic looking with four prongs or so in it) and the modern SATA kind but you ONLY use one of the two along with the SATA data cable. so if you have two power connectors make sure NOT to connect two as that 'might' damage the hard drive etc!!! but I don't think this kind of hard drive setup is too common as far as I am aware since all of the rest of my hard drive only have the usual ONE sata(or IDE) connection and ONE way to power it be it the usual SATA power connector OR the older 'molex' power connector, not both. No. the OS (Windows or Linux etc) basically takes care of all of this stuff as the BIOS basically just see's the hardware and then the OS pretty much does the rest. I see. nowadays 4GB of RAM is what I would call a realistic minimum for a usable computer, although if you had 8GB of RAM that would be plenty for general usage as you won't have any RAM issues for general usage with 8GB of RAM but with 4GB, depending on how long you are using that computer etc, you could see some level of performance hit from lack of RAM eventually. your CPU should be plenty fast enough to as just about any decent quad core like that should be solid for online usage etc and that CPU is definitely superior to my old computer from 2006's AMD Athlon X2 3600+ dual-core CPU, which I installed into that board in the year 2010 I think so I could play the game Mafia II (2010). but damn, a 60GB HDD. fairly ancient tech there ; hell, it's probably good that's dead anyways. lol but I see '32bit' Win7 as there probably ain't much reason to use a 32bit OS in today's world as just about everything is 64bit (64ibt OS's have been the norm since basically the Win7 era to date as on WinXP, the 32bit version was more common/popular than the 64bit version) and I would assume given your specs there is a good chance it will be okay with 64bit OS's as my old 2006 board works fine with 64bit Mint. come to think of it... if you have a 32bit OS it's limited to a max of 4GB of system RAM. to use say 8GB of RAM you need a 64bit OS. if I recall correctly, I think with a 32bit OS, how it's limited to 4GB of RAM, I think that's also shared with VRAM (video RAM) from your GPU to. so if you had say a GPU with 512MB of VRAM (even on the GPU itself) I 'think' the OS would then be limited to a max of 3.5GB of RAM even if 4GB of physical RAM is installed etc. but with 64bit all of these limitations disappear. I am not surprised as given what you told me it seems like the HDD (hard drive) is fried. try another hard drive, laptop or desktop you have laying around. if it works, and you can't use this, just buy a cheap SSD online as it makes everything (general programs etc) load much quicker. a SSD is a 'solid state drive', these are a lot faster than a regular hard drive. as a small bonus... I don't even bother to properly mount these in my desktop computer as I just leave mine connected to the SATA data/power cables sitting in the bottom of the PC case on mine for years now (I had a SSD in my primary PC since May 2015) as the SATA power/data cables are snug enough to where there is no chance they will come loose when it's just sitting there like that as the SSD is light to. so even if someone moves the case around, it will still stay securely connected. but with regular hard drive I suggest mounting those properly to be safe. In terms of general usage I can assure you, Mint will work well for general use like web browser etc as overall it's very similar to Windows that you are used to given Mint's basic interface is Windows-like (Ubuntu on the other hand, I think it's interface is not as similar to Windows as Mint's is, but the underlying OS Mint is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS but uses different DE's (desktop environments), Cinnamon/MATE/Xfce (Xfce is the least resource intensive, which is suited well for older hardware. but there basic function is similar), which is like the interface you use to navigate menus as all three options from Mint is Windows-like in general familiarity of navigating menus). even online many suggest Mint is good for beginners switching from Windows to Linux. updating and browser usage as it's no harder than Windows in this regard. sure, Linux is different in some ways, and I can easily understand how in some ways it might be confusing compared to what you are used to with Windows, but the basics are easy enough, especially given you told me you just want it for web browser use pretty much. on Linux Mint for example... all updates come through the 'Update Manager' (it's sort of like 'Windows Updates' except it's entirely on you when to install the updates (but it will automatically check for updates for you pretty much) and a bonus with Linux is updates generally don't require a reboot to take effect besides say Kernel updates and if you got a NVIDIA GPU that can run the NVIDIA proprietary driver that requires a reboot to take effect), including your web browsers as they don't automatically update like they do on Windows. but this is easy enough as there is a 'shield' looking icon in the task bar, with a orange dot on it appearing when updates are available, which lets you know there is updates you can install but it's up to you whether to run the updates or not as it won't install without your permission. but to install them it's easy enough as you simply left click the shield icon then pretty much click 'install updates' it will then ask for your administrator password (which is the one you setup on Mint during initial installation of the OS) and then it will proceed to download and install the updates automatically. occasionally you might need to click the 'refresh' (in the Update Manager) and then 'install updates' but it's easy enough. that's the general idea even in regards to general music playback/conversion software... on Linux Mint I use Foobar2000 (which is Windows software) but I got to set it up through Wine etc, so it directly runs on Linux. I use this simply because it's superior to any native Linux software for general music playback like if you have FLAC(lossless) or MP3(lossy) music files etc. plus, like I was saying you can also use ImgBurn on Linux Mint once you know how to set it up (but once setup it's Windows level easy as you simply load it from a icon on the desktop basically and it works). which if you want to do this after you get it sorted out with say Linux Mint on your system I can help you. anyways, in regards to your questions... 1)It is a bootable USB stick and while you can use it 'live' (as you can browse the basic OS after it boots up, but will be a little sluggish since it's running from a USB stick not a HDD/SSD) it's only temporarily as to use it where it can save settings etc you actually need to install it, which can be done from that same bootable USB stick as it's done from the 'live' boot from the desktop icon 'Install Linux Mint' as it's right on the desktop. but at the very least... just booting to this allows you to try out the OS a little bit since the actual OS does load up from it so you can browse the 'start menu' etc without installing anything as at this point it's running from the USB stick. you can even load Firefox, although like I was saying, since it's about 6 months old it will be using a older Firefox, but this will be fixed if you actually install the OS to a hard drive at which point you can update it and be on the newest browser etc and can even install the official Google Chrome on Linux Mint if you prefer. 2)Mint is small as even a 4GB USB stick will work as the Mint ISO it's, for the Xfce version (which I also use), is exactly "2.2 GiB (2,415,585,280 bytes)". basically "linuxmint-21-xfce-64bit.iso". I use Xfce on all three of my computers (2 desktops, 1 laptop). my old ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe board (basically 2005-2006 tech, it's using DDR as I see yours is a bit newer with DDR2 RAM) works fine with this and it's got 4GB of RAM and my old Radeon 5670 512MB GPU is in that, which I also got in the year 2010 to play Mafia II. 3)Mint is free and you can get it from the official Linux Mint site here... https://linuxmint.com/ but more specifically the ISO itself (Mint v21.0-Xfce (Mint 21.1-Xfce should be out around Christmas but you can update to this through the OS if you want, or you can just stay on 21.0 as it's optional)) is for download here... https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=301 (shows a basic screenshot of the desktop and menu there(I turned mine 'dark' looking though since I feel it suits the general darker look of the Mint Xfce desktop in general but by default it's grey like that but as you can see it's Windows like in terms of the general menu navigation even though things are different on some level given it's Linux, not Windows) just scroll down to the 'Download mirrors' and click on any of those links which will download the "linuxmint-21-xfce-64bit.iso". while that's fine and good enough for you to use, if you want to be extra sure the ISO is as it should be and without any potential modifications simply make sure the SHA-256 hash matches the following before using it "3ad001dc15cb661c6652ce1d20ecdc85a939fa0b4b9325af5d0c65379cc3b17e" (or MD5 hash if you prefer... "7f213f0a15cc92e3c12d322df002541e")

If the motherboard is not physically damaged or some sort of static electricity damage that stops the SATA ports from working etc, or just failed from old age, I would imagine you can just put in another hard drive and it will work? ; did you ever try another hard drive in it (did you try all of the SATA ports(?), or if it's the old IDE, did you try these?) temporarily just to see if it would install a OS to it? or are you certain it's definitely damaged? but I get your basic point now though. my backup PC, which is the first PC I built in March 2006 (although my first PC I had was in 1995), so 16 years and 9 months now (the BIOS on that I think is from early 2007, which is the newest available), I still have that as within about the last year or two or so I replaced most of the capacitors on the motherboard (ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe (this is a high end board in it's day which has 4 SATA ports and some IDE connections to)) since a good portion of them were bulging etc. but this computer cannot run anything newer than Windows 7 in regards to Microsoft OS's (technically Win10 32bit will install but it's unstable and the 64bit version won't install outright due to lack of nx-bit. but Win7 runs fine and so does Linux). but it runs Linux Mint 21.0-Xfce well which is supported until April 2027. but if you are basically just trying to get online, which appears to be the case, I suggest giving Linux Mint 21.0-Xfce (which the ISO you download is 2.2 GiB (2,415,585,280 bytes)) a try as once you boot to this you will have immediate access to the Firefox browser even though it will be slightly outdated given Mint 21 was released about 6 months ago (although if you actually installed the OS you can update it to the newest browser etc like expected). you can install the official Chrome on Linux to but I use the alternative Chromium as on my Mint install I use Firefox as my primary browser with Chromium as a backup. but Linux is nice on older underpowered computers (it will run well on fast one to obviously though) as I got a laptop (which I don't really use much) that clearly has a underpowered CPU (AMD E-300 (which besides that the laptop ain't bad)) and you can tell Mint runs overall smoother than Win10 does. but trying Mint is easy enough as you just create a standard bootable USB stick (or DVD) and boot to it and it will take you to the desktop to play with it a bit. it will be a bit slower vs running from a HDD or SSD since it's a USB stick but you can get a half way decent feel for it though. if you want Chrome, when you are on Linux load up Firefox and go to... https://www.google.com/chrome/ then 'download chrome' and you will see a popup showing "64 bit .deb (For Debian/Ubuntu)" as you download that file and run it basically. how much RAM does that computer have? ; because on my board I mentioned here it maxes out at 4GB of RAM (4x 1GB), which is what I got in it. but nowadays 2GB of RAM is a bare minimum (as once you load the OS and a browser, shortly after it will blow past 2GB of RAM) even though a more realistic usable minimum is 4GB of RAM for a usable computer since you can load the OS and have some RAM left for the browser for a while. come to think of it, Firefox is a bit more RAM friendly to, but you can still use Chrome if you want to. another thing is... I hope that computer is at least some form of dual-core CPU (the ASUS board I mentioned above currently has a Athlon X2 3600+ CPU in it which is dual-core at 2.0GHz but is currently overclocked to 2.3GHz and it's passable for internet etc) as single core CPU's at this point, even the faster ones, are probably pushing ancient status as I had a old computer from 2001 with a Athlon 1.2GHz and even years ago you could tell that was pretty much shot as doing simple tasks would routinely push the CPU to full load etc. but depending on your options we shall see

I see, you want to be able to actually run the entire OS itself strictly from a flash drive, correct? if so, in that case, I can't say much since I never bothered to do that as I would imagine Windows would run quite slowly even if one could get it working. but I know if you are just trying to get a basic live flash drive (without being able to save general OS configuration etc on reboots) OS's like Linux Mint do this by default as you boot into a live OS temporarily, as this is how you can optionally install it to a HDD, but from the live USB stick you can still browse your hard drives with file manager and browse the web with Firefox like this on Mint as it's basically the entire OS running from USB stick, but nothing gets saved on reboots by default. I don't know if this is sufficient for what you are trying to do though. I do know there are ways to run a Linux OS entirely from a bootable USB stick, while being able to save data to it so it's saved on reboots, but I never bothered to learn the details of how though. but a quick look, apparently Rufus might work for creating a live USB stick for Windows... https://www.intowindows.com/rufus-to-create-windows-to-go-usb-drive/

A popular free program on Windows to make a bootable USB stick is https://rufus.ie/ ; which works with ISO's. on a bit of a side note while I have used Rufus in the past, and it's good, I prefer Ventoy (ventoy.net) which allows you to boot ISO's directly from it's menu after you boot to it as I can boot Windows or Linux etc ISO's directly this way as it's convenient to have a single USB stick to load multiple ISO's from. basically once Ventoy is installed to the USB stick, you just simply copy your ISO to the root of the USB stick, reboot computer, boot to USB stick, then select the ISO you want to boot from the Ventoy menu and then proceed to use like usual. but as a alternative to making your own ISO from a DVD disc... if you know the official SHA-1 hash etc of Win7 ISO's (I know mine is fine if you are English USA 'en-us' ) you can obtain them online from random places and don't have to worry about viruses etc. hell, I even made a custom updated Win7 ISO that has updates included up to May 2021, although there is even newer updates like this since I made mine as the most current is up to Nov 2022 as I just checked. this makes it more convenient since it's not many years out of date like the official SP1 ISO is as you just install it and your pretty much up to date (and it even removed some of the junk in Win7 to with the method I used from the mydigitallife website with the 'Integrate7 script' by user 'wkeller'). but the official stock English(US) Win7 Pro x64 SP1 ISO's SHA-1 hash is "0bcfc54019ea175b1ee51f6d2b207a3d14dd2b58" (if you need the official SHA-1 hash of a different Win7 ISO I can probably find it). I still got the ISO on my hard drive but you can download it random places online if you search around. I pretty much don't use Win7 anymore since officially Microsoft stopped supporting it in Jan 2020, so it no longer will receive security updates etc (if you can't upgrade from Win7 to Win10 (which can be done for free assuming your hardware supports it) I suggest putting Linux (more specifically Linux Mint) on your computer since it's free and will keep your machine secure online (the newest Mint v21 series is supported until April 2027)). but I keep Win7 ISO around on the rare occasion I might need it as, for example, one old device I have (Zune 30GB) requires Win7 to be able to transfer any data to it. but thankfully I rarely use that device anymore anyways. but in regards to that modified/custom Win7 ISO I made (which includes all Win7 updates etc to May 2021)... it's "5.0 GiB (5,353,363,456 bytes)" in size vs the official stock ISO of "3.1 GiB (3,320,903,680 bytes)". so it's basically a little over 2GB larger, which as you can see is too large to fit onto a standard 4.7GB DVD anyways (it's about 654MB too large), so you pretty much got to use a USB stick (or DVD+R DL which is too expensive to burn a ISO to anyways).

While I do use it for data to, I actually DO use ImgBurn to burn a standard AUDIO CD (ImgBurn is just more optimally setup for data though is all as a typical burning program for audio CD's is easier/more straight forward to use even though ImgBurn does work well for standard AUDIO CD's once you know what to do). it even can overburn audio CD's to as I know those typical cheaper Verbatim CD-R's with a 'CMC Magnetics Corp' ID will overburn to at least 82min15sec as that works fine on my old audio CD player from the early 1990's. it shows up as 82min12sec on the player and the disc plays fine until the end. I just use only WAV files with it since it works with those without issue out-of-the-box. I just use Foobar2000 to convert my FLAC to WAV temporarily so ImgBurn can it use. I am using ImgBurn on Linux and since plugins are less likely to work on Linux, it's all the more reason for me to just use only WAV files with it since that works out-of-the-box. basically on ImgBurn to burn audio CD from my FLAC converted to WAV files I just use ImgBurn's "Tools > Create CUE File..." section. drag-and-drop WAV files in here then click 'OK' it will than save a ".cue" file and then with ImgBurn's 'Mode > Write' (load ".cue" file or drag-and-drop it into this windows 'source' section) it can then write it to a standard AUDIO CD which will work in any standard audio CD player. Yeah, on Windows I have no doubts. on Linux, which I know is not officially supported, I don't think 'madflac' etc works. but it's not a issue since a easy enough work around is to just use WAV files directly which I can convert easily enough from FLAC using Foobar2000 as both Foobar2000 and ImgBurn work well on Linux (although ImgBurn does not work on Linux if someone just simply installs it as a few tweaks have to be done before it works, which boils down to setting Wine to WinXP mode and using the 'SPTI - Microsoft' and 'Device Interface' (or 'Device Class') set in ImgBurn options otherwise it won't see a persons CD/DVD burners and without WinXP set, the program will hang at the ImgBurn splash screen). Thanks for the info. I hope you are right.

I always keep all of my music in FLAC format and if I need to burn with ImgBurn, like burning a standard audio CD (or overburning a standard audio CD), ill just temporarily convert to WAV files (using Foobar2000) for use with ImgBurn. I run ImgBurn on Linux as the method above works well since you just install ImgBurn and it will work with the above WAV files for standard audio CD burning by default with no conversion needed in ImgBurn itself basically. I would generally avoid burning standard audio CD's from lossy formats like MP3/AAC etc. but since ImgBurn has not been updated since the year 2013, I would say it's unlikely it will be updated at this point. but ImgBurn works quite well already for general data burning. it's audio CD burning works well enough to if you know how to work within it's limitations.

I got GParted installed on my main machine running Linux Mint as it's nice to have around occasionally for HDD or USB stick etc tweaking/setup once in a while. but since most people won't be using Linux, then using a boot CD with it could be of occasional use. p.s. but what dbminter said should be the gist of it. just write (Mode > Write (then basically drag-and-drop the ISO into this window, select write speed, write)) the ISO image to a CD and you should be able to boot to it.

If that is pretty much a offline computer then it's not a problem to continue using WinXP. but if you use it online for browsing websites fairly regularly it's unwise to use that as even looking at Firefox and Chrome browsers it appears they dropped support of those on Windows XP years ago as if you can't install a recent version of those there is likely plenty of flaws one could exploit in the browser just by visiting a compromised site. so even if you want to roll-the-dice a bit, even assuming you can find a half way decent updated browser, I would avoid doing anything important on that computer online on the side of caution to avoid any potential virus infection just by visiting a website. because it could be possible that just by visiting a site it might take advantage of a browser flaw to gain access to the system since nothing will be patched at all in relation to flaws related to WinXP in the browser and OS, so if someone can get by the browser and exploit a flaw in the OS, you could have a problem. I am not sure how likely this is to occur, but I would definitely not take the chance if this is used to do anything important online like banking or sign into important sites you care about etc. so basically unless there is a certain software you use that only works on Windows, it's wise to install Linux (which is completely free) on that older system since then you would have a reliable updated machine that's safe to use online and is secure. for example... Mint v21.0-Xfce (which is basically what I got installed on all three of my computers with one of those computers being a high end motherboard board I had since March 2006, as it's basically higher end 2005 motherboard tech, and is limited to 4GB of RAM as that's the motherboards limit) is supported until April 2027 with updates, and like I mentioned, ImgBurn works on this (along with some level of Windows programs(I use Foobar2000 which is a quality music playback/conversion program through Linux to), even though obviously, not all Windows programs will work on Linux through Wine) along with updated versions of browsers like Firefox/Chrome etc. I personally use Firefox as my primary browser and I have Chromium as a backup, but there are other choices like the official Chrome if you prefer that etc. just some thoughts in case you are not aware of this stuff

Unless you must keep WinXP for some reason one should not still be using that at this point as it's not had any security updates since April 2014. Windows 7 lost support in Jan 2020. I suggest putting Linux (Linux Mint v21.0-Xfce) on it as then you would have a secure internet machine and ImgBurn works okay on Linux once setup properly. I can even use KProbe (it's good for checking burn quality of CD/DVD if you got a Liteon drive etc) on Linux to through Wine etc. Linux should not have trouble reading the discs you burned with ImgBurn.

I am pretty sure Dreamcast can't read CD-RW media as all of the games I burned back in the day were on CD-R. p.s.I still got my Dreamcast but it collects dust

I see. I assume they mainly fail early on home DVD players (as you mentioned "won't even get to 100 [re-writes]") where as with PC DVD burners they will go much longer? I just wonder what one could reasonably expect from quality re-writable media in terms of how many writes on the PC use side of things. hopefully at least 100-200 writes.

Like mentioned above you basically use it until it no longer works reliably as, to be safe, always allow the 'verify' part to complete after burning a re-writable disc. while I can't say for sure, I would guesstimate quality re-writable media should last a rather long time like Verbatim as I got some Verbatim CD-RW (4x rated) and DVD+RW (2.4x rated), which both are pretty much new old stock, not all that long ago (the DVD+RW I think I got in 2019 and the CD-RW I got earlier this year) and I expect those will last me for the foreseeable future. the DVD+RW I got in probably 2019 have a '2002' date on the back of the jewel case, so I would guesstimate it's anywhere from 2002 to roughly mid-2000's. but as the OP might already know... re-writable media is less reliable than regular write-once media. p.s. in another post I made on these forums not all that long ago (i.e. https://forum.imgburn.com/topic/26639-imgburn-v2580-works-on-linux-mint-v20x-here-is-how/?do=findComment&comment=169001 ) I was using some old (I likely bought sometime in the 2000's, probably mid-2000's or so) Memorex CD-RW (10x rated) discs and you could see they were pretty much on their way out given the write/read was flaky.

Well apparently it is with those newer drives LightningUK mentioned since they can overburn to 8.7GB instead of being limited to 8.5GB like is typical (or use a old iHASx24B drives etc like I got with the special firmware, but the newer drives are probably better because I would assume they have better support for more modern Verbatim DVD+R DL 8x discs etc). so with a proper burner, a proper ISO, and assuming your XBox360 is moded correctly etc, it should work if you using quality media, which basically means Verbatim DVD+R DL specifically. while you can probably get away with more generic brands on regular DVD-R(or +R) media, that's much less so on DL media since they are more fussy, which makes Verbatim brand specifically all that much more required. but I forgot most of the details on XBox360 stuff since I have probably not burned a game (or XGD3) since probably 2013 or so as taking a quick look through some of my burned games most are 2010 or before with a little after that point and from a quick look, 2013 (or so) was probably the last time I burned a XBox360 game. p.s. if it were possible to make a 8.7GB smaller, they most likely would have done so in the old days and saved people the trouble of needing special firmware/burner to burn those XDG3 games. that's kind of why I assume tweaking ISO size is pointless as I don't remember doing any of that back when I was using my XBox360 regularly.

Are you referring to the Optiarc ones they are selling here... https://www.vinpowerdigital.com/t/categories/Optical-Drives/Optiarc-DVD-Burner because I seen some site (a post date of many years ago now) mentioning cross-flash etc, but I just ignored it since I figured it would be easier with what was standard back-in-the-day. I did not realize they got new drives that allow over-burning to 8.7GB (on DVD+R DL media), but apparently those do. but assuming those work well, that might be better since it's new and more recent and I suspect has better compatibility with newer 8x certified DVD+R DL media. still, from taking a quick look, at least here in the USA, it's seem like very little is available at a reasonable price range.

I do see some iHAS324 "B" models for sale on Ebay if that helps. it must be a "B" model otherwise you can't flash that special firmware to it to my knowledge! because with those you can flash the special firmware and then with the proper discs (Verbatim DVD+R DL) you should be able to burn XGD3 games properly then is your best bet since I know that works. but taking a quick look online it seems most of the Verbatim DVD+R DL available are rated at '8x'. I don't 'think' that will be a problem but the ones I specifically used were officially rated for 2.4x, which I still see some of these older ones for sale on Ebay as they are in 20-discs per pack which is what mine is as I just checked as I got as I got about 8 discs left in my pack which I had since back when XBox360 burning was more common. so while the '8x' discs might work, it's probably safer to get the 2.4x rated ones since I suspect there will be less potential issues with the burner/media combo this way given those burners are roughly 10 years old (mine says 'May 2011' for mfg date as I just checked) and might not work as well with newer 8x media. but it's your call. I am just assuming your XBox360 is already moded properly as I have not flashed mine in a rather long time now so I forgot most of the stuff at this point. but I am pretty sure my XBox360 has the Samsung MS28 drive which I think Hitachi ones were more common and of lower quality. I think I had a certain PCI card I needed to flash my Samsung drives firmware (in the XBox360 itself) from my old PC at the time. off the top of my head VIA 6421 PCI card comes to mind and checking online I must have been right since it mentions that JungleFlasher program in relation to it etc and I think it can be done from DOS to 'if' I recall correctly. so while I still do somewhat remember this stuff, I am sure I forgot the bulk of the details p.s. but from looking around online it appears models iHAS124B through iHAS524B should work (so 1 2 3 4 or 5) with that special firmware.

I have not used my moded XBox360 in a while but, at least to my knowledge the last I knew, you had to use the Burner Max firmware on a Liteon 324 B drive for it to properly burn all of the data on a XDG3 sized ISO since it's actually over-burning some data beyond what's normally the limit and you can't do this without custom firmware on a typical burner the last I knew. I don't know the details on what it burns, but apparently it was important enough for them to release that custom firmware. so unless things have changed since I last knew, I suspect you need a burner to properly burn those XGD3 games since regular games you can just use a typical DVD burner on Verbatim DVD+R DL media. I still have some of my quality made in singapore Verbatim DVD+R DL discs, which I solely used for XBox360 stuff. I believe burning at 2.4x was recommended but it might have been possible to burn at 4x. I still have my burner that was flashed with the Burner Max firmware and still have my moded XBox360 but I have not really used the XBox360 in years now as I mainly use that Liteon 324 B burner I have for a general DVD burner nowadays. my burner shows up in ImgBurn as... "I 12:05:24 -> Drive 2 - Info: ATAPI iHAS324 B AL1B (J:)"

I know this post is over 2 years old now, but I tried burning a ".CDI" file to a 700MB CD-RW disc with ImgBurn v2.5.8.0 (on Linux Mint) and it worked (at least as far as the general burning process) as I just copied over the "pfctoc.dll" to root of the general ImgBurn directory before attempting to burn the ".CDI" file and it burned successfully and verified okay. but I did not test anything directly on the Dreamcast itself as even if I did it appears ill almost certainly have to burn it to CD-R since apparently the Dreamcast won't read CD-RW discs from looking around online (at least not without tweaking laser power which could burn it out faster, as it's risky to tweak, so I am leaving mine as-is in it's stock state). but just to see what happens when I remove that "pfctoc.dll" from the root of the ImgBurn directory... after removing it, loading up ImgBurn, then doing a drag-n-drop of the .CDI file into ImgBurn, it throws pretty much the same error the OP got in the ImgBurn log window... E 03:22:50 Unable to initialise PfcToc! - PfcToc.dll E 03:22:50 Reason: Module not found. E 03:22:50 You need to copy pfctoc.dll into the program folder. (C:\Program Files\ImgBurn\) E 03:22:50 Visit http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download to download it. so apparently putting that pfctoc.dll file into the root of the ImgBurn directory has a big effect on trying to burn Dreamcast games with ImgBurn p.s. I do have a Dreamcast and I know it played burned games the last I checked, but I have not used that console in ages now.

It already works on Linux through Wine...