ImbBurn 2.5.0.0 (and eventually machine) hangs with power saving active

[fvisagie]

Hi,

 

While I was basically doing non-stop video work, I had the machine's screen saver and power saving settings disabled and ImgBurn worked fine.

 

Lately I've been having problems with every single disc I tried to burn. Around 20-odd% and say 10 - 20 minutes into the disc, ImgBurn's counters would stop. The log would show that the the Abort button is acknowledged, but ImgBurn wouldn't go into a state where it becomes controllable for exiting or whatever. Once I open Task Manager to end ImgBurn that way, eventually every other process including the shell would hang in such a way that the machine can't be shut down anymore, but has to be turned off.

 

Thinking back about what might have changed, I suspected that this behaviour started when I re-enabled screen saver and power saving settings.

 

I have since disabled screen saver and power saving settings again, and so far all is well with ImgBurn and I.

 

The machine is a Dell Latitude D810 with Windows XP SP3, I'm using ImgBurn 2.5.0.0 and the burner is a USB-connected HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4120B. All hardware has the most recent firmware.

 

ImgBurn is not set to prevent the screen saver, but is set to prevent the machine entering stand by.

 

The currently configured screen saver is Blank screen, and when power saving settings are enabled, monitor off, hard disc off, standby and hibernate are all configured for various intervals in that sequence.

 

The crucial question is: at which interval did ImgBurn stop processing? Unfortunately I cannot answer that. At the time I experienced the problems I did not suspect an association with screen saver and/or power saving activation and did not take careful note of how long the machine had been without interaction.

 

However, I *think* it was around the time of hard disc off. In case it makes any difference, ImgBurn is installed to the internal system disc, and the DVD source is on an external USB disc.

 

As much as I'd like to help by narrowing down the specific power saving setting that's associated with this behaviour, I'm afraid that would be too expensive! I've already lost 6 Double Layer discs because of this and have nothing smaller at hand to do tests with.

 

Hope this helps!

[mmalves]

Look for the latest drivers for your motherboard's chipset. Use SIW to find out if you don't know.

 

You might also want to open Device Manager, expand the USB controllers branch, open the Properties of each device and untick the "allow the computer to turn off this device to save energy" option on every device in that list.

[fvisagie]

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

I was about to suggest to move this topic to a different forum anyway, due to what happened after starting it.

 

With all power saving settings disabled and while working on the machine, after about 20 minutes' burning I heard the Windows ding-dong doorbell sound of a plug-and-play device going out of service. Immediately the ImgBurn counters also stopped. Because all power saving was disabled I can no longer conclude that the cause is ImgBurn's handling of power saving.

 

Unfortunately I cannot tell which device went out of service, nor why. The two external USB devices - the source hard drive and burner - were both still on, but the I/O subsystem was unresponsive so Safely Remove Hardware, Explorer etc. couldn't be operated. So at least it seems the going out of service is drive-related.

 

I've since rechecked all external and internal enclosure connections and there's no problem there. The two USB drives are externally powered, which should rule out the possibility of them being under-powered.

 

I'll follow your suggestions, if only to rule out those possibilities.

[fvisagie]

An update. There were no firmware or drivers available which my machine did not yet have, but thanks for the suggestion.

 

Because ImgBurn stopped processing when the plug-and-play device went out of service, I suspected that either the source drive or burner was involved. The burner's USB connector on the machine was running very hot, being located right next to the CPU and a fan. Previously I'd had data corruption issues when transferring data to a memory stick which had been left plugged into that connector for an extended period of time. At the time I'd put it down to the cheap memory stick.

 

Now I suspected the possibility that the USB connector might have some form of poor connection such as a dry joint which plays up when it heats up and moved the burner's plug to a different USB port. The source drive had been plugged in just above the burner and wasn't running much cooler, so for good measure I moved that too.

 

So far (touching different wood this time!), no further issues.

 

Thanks for your assistance and sorry for having cast aspersions on ImgBurn!