Verify fails at 66% every time

[philamental]

Hello.

 

I've been successfully using Imgburn for all my burning requirements over the past few months since my discovery of the application. It's been perfect from start to finish until this week where every Image I burn fails the verification at 66% exactly, each and every time. What's changed since last week? ... actually a lot!

 

I've installed new motherboard, processor, RAM, Hard Disks, reinstalled OS from scratch, and a fresh Imgburn installation. I guess you could say the only thing that hasn't changed has been my choice of Media (TDK DVD-R, Maxell DVD-RW, both of which have been flawless in the past) and my Burner.

 

I don't think my issue is with Imgburn to be honest, so apologies if I should be taking my issue elsewhere, but I'm just looking for guidance as I believe this could be a fairly basic hardware/software issue that I'm overlooking, due to the fact that the verification fails persistently at the same point even with different media/images etc.

 

I have DMA 'on' on all drives (although I didn't with my initial burn) and I include two logs below. The first was when I was using the Nvidia SATA drivers which came with the ASUS P5N-E SLI motherboard, but after research I figured I'd need to try with DMA on and changed my controller drivers to the standard MS driver which is what was used in the second driver.

 

I'm hoping to get replies other than 'use better media' as I genuinely don't believe this is the issue, even if I could be using better media.

 

I will obviously answer any queries as best as I can if I've left any info out.

 

Thanks

 

Phil

 

Log 1 with DMA 'on' on Burner, 'off' on Hard Disks.

 

; //****************************************\\

; ImgBurn Version 2.4.1.0 - Log

; Tuesday, 24 June 2008, 22:23:33

; \\****************************************//

;

;

I 22:00:15 ImgBurn Version 2.4.1.0 started!

I 22:00:15 Microsoft Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600 : Service Pack 2)

I 22:00:15 Total Physical Memory: 3,668,460 KB - Available: 2,968,420 KB

I 22:00:15 Initialising SPTI...

I 22:00:15 Searching for SCSI / ATAPI devices...

I 22:00:15 Found 1 DVD-ROM and 1 DVD

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Does the TTH02 media still error out if you burn at 8x?

 

Have you tried a cleaning disc in the drive?

 

Is its firmware up-to-date?

 

Failing all that, get yourself a new drive. Yours may well have had it.

[philamental]

Does the TTH02 media still error out if you burn at 8x?

 

Will try this out.

 

Have you tried a cleaning disc in the drive?

 

Nope. Will try this also although it may be tomorrow before I can as I don't have a cleaning disc currently.

 

Is its firmware up-to-date?

 

Don't think so. I checked the process of updating firmware and it's something I'm going to leave as a last resort in case I f*** up the drive.

 

Failing all that, get yourself a new drive. Yours may well have had it.

 

Hope not. I'd say I've burned less than 50 discs in it's lifetime and it was fine up till the upgrade/reinstall so I thought it was good to go in the new setup.

 

I take it there's nothing specific about the 66% stage then that can point at a specific problematic area? Was hoping you might be able to say something like 'that's when it checks xyz so it must be your cable or drive if it fails there each time'

 

Anyhoo, thanks for the advice. I'll try cleaning, 8x and firmware in that order. Unless someone has any other ideas I'll probably get a new drive at that point. Thanks for your time. I'll reply again when I have anything worth updating the thread with.

 

Phil

[laserfan]

Phil, I was having Verify problems too, though not a consistent "fails at 66%" problem like yours. But I'm wondering if, in your new PC setup, you've used the hard drives from your old setup?

 

My PC was created a few years ago, and was built from-scratch using hdds from still Older computers, and developed a problem where I couldn't get Verify to work properly. A couple things I did that may inspire something for you:

 

1. I'd had my Paging File assigned to a non-C:\ drive. Internal, but a separate drive. I was sometimes getting BSODs and I think it had to do with Windows being confused about drive letters--because I'd also assigned DIFFERENT DRIVE LETTERS THAN WHAT WINDOWS BUILT-IN ALGORITHM WOULD NATURALLY ASSIGN.

 

2. I also found my way to my MountedDevices key in the Windows registry, which should have had just a couple dozen entries, but instead had almost 200! This is the place where XP keeps track of what partitions you have, and what letters are assigned. You can clean it up by deleting the entries and re-booting.

 

I also had a suspicious drive, i.e. I wondered if one of my internal drives wasn't overheating and glitching-out on me after being worked hard. Dunno if that was right or not but I swapped it out.

 

Just thinking maybe the "66%" might have something to do with temporary or paging files, and the way your PC is partitioned. Wild ass guess.

[philamental]

@Laserfan ... thanks for the reply. I was actually thinking along similar lines before I noticed your post. I had noticed that my page file settings were not optimal and I wondered whether that was having anything to do with the problem I was having. Anyway, I'll get to that in a minute, but for now, and in short, I have a major update ...

 

I'm back working again!

 

The bad news is I've no idea what the issue was, but I'll outline my attempts to fix just in case someone else is having similar issues and they find this post of some interest.

 

As originally suggested, I tried my TTH02 media at 8x, cleaned the drive, and upgraded to the latest writer firmware to no avail. All DVD-Rs and my test DVD+RW failed at 66%. I had made a fair few coasters at this point and decided to not waste anymore DVD-Rs and just continue using the +RW whenever I wanted a test burn. I then started to look at my setup.

 

In brief, I had two new 500GB SATA drives, but I also had connected up my previous system disc in order to transfer files. Windows had set my page file at only 2GB despite my having 4GB of RAM. I also had manually switched a lot of drive letters during setup, so I looked into the 'MountedDevices' key as suggested by Laserfan, but all seemed ok. I proceeded to mess around with the page file settings, setting page file size to approx 6GB, and across various drives, doing a test burn on the +RW each time. I noted a couple of times that while it still failed, it didn't always fail at 66% anymore. I saw this as some degree of progress and tested significantly before exhausting my options and settling on a small page file on my system disk and the majority of the 6GB page file on my data disk.

 

I then opened up the PC again looking for loose connections. I noted that I had forgotten to connect the Front Panel Audio Connectors (R-Out, L-Out, GND etc) and did a test burn thinking unconnected cables had to be the issue, but no joy. I tried burns on different IDE connectors and IDE cables, with drives disconnected, again with no positive results (the 66% figure was now back).

 

I was all but resigned to replacing my drive, as suggested by LIGHTNING UK!, when for some reason I ended up trying a different +RW. Bingo! Success. I tried a different image, same result. I connected everything back up the way it should be .... same result! I retried my original test +RW ... failed at 66%. I tried one of my -Rs ... success! In short, I had somehow fixed the problem since my last DVD-R test after the firmware update, but because i was using a dodgy +RW whenever I tested a burn, I never noticed it.

 

Therefore, I reckon it's one of the following, although I can't be sure which. Any ideas as to the likely culprit?

 

1. Optimising the Page File. (if i had to pick one, I'd go for this)

2. Connecting up the Front Panel Audio Connectors (wouldnt have thought these would affect burning, but I don't know).

3. Re-seating/connecting all cables and components inside the PC.

 

I'm delighted I have Imgburn working again, as it's perfect for my needs. Thanks to both LIGHTNING UK!, and laserfan for their responses, and attempts to assist me.

 

Phil

[laserfan]

I was all but resigned to replacing my drive, as suggested by LIGHTNING UK!, when for some reason I ended up trying a different +RW. Bingo! Success. I tried a different image, same result. I connected everything back up the way it should be .... same result! I retried my original test +RW ... failed at 66%. I tried one of my -Rs ... success! In short, I had somehow fixed the problem since my last DVD-R test after the firmware update, but because i was using a dodgy +RW whenever I tested a burn, I never noticed it.

 

Therefore, I reckon it's one of the following, although I can't be sure which. Any ideas as to the likely culprit?

 

1. Optimising the Page File. (if i had to pick one, I'd go for this)

2. Connecting up the Front Panel Audio Connectors (wouldnt have thought these would affect burning, but I don't know).

3. Re-seating/connecting all cables and components inside the PC.

 

I'm delighted I have Imgburn working again, as it's perfect for my needs. Thanks to both LIGHTNING UK!, and laserfan for their responses, and attempts to assist me.

I don't understand. You're saying the problem all along has been a single DVD+RW rewritable disc you've been using for testing? If yes, why the 1-2-3 i.e. just throw away the disc!? Or a combination of the "dodgy" disc and something else you changed? Guess that's it.

 

I'd say 3. or 1., or 4. () but not 2. FYI among the (many) things I tried when I was getting verify errors was to change my signalling method from Cable Select to Master/Slave (jumpering). But I can only guess that if you had an angled connector (not properly seated) or something that might have created an addressing problem that caused the process to fail at a specific point. Or wrt Page File that your memorysize-vs-pagefileneed was such that again a specific memory size became an issue.

 

One suggestion I have is for you to write-down somewhere everything you've tried/done so that if this comes up again at least you can try to refresh your memory about it.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Firmware and new discs would have done it for me, the other 3 look totally bogus.

[philamental]

I don't understand. You're saying the problem all along has been a single DVD+RW rewritable disc you've been using for testing? If yes, why the 1-2-3 i.e. just throw away the disc!? Or a combination of the "dodgy" disc and something else you changed? Guess that's it.

 

Nope, it definitely wasn't just one dodgy +RW disc. Thankfully my situation wasn't that embarrassing! Sorry for the confusion. My preferred DVD-Rs worked 100% up until my reinstall, then failed 4 times in a row after that. (This was when I came on here) After my first round of attempted fixes (cleaning, firmware upgrade) 2 more discs failed. I decided at that point to use the +RW for testing rather than create any more coasters. Sometime after that, I resolved the problem, but didn't notice I did as my test disc was dodgy. After I eventually realised the problem was fixed, the same batch of DVD-Rs worked 100% of the time again, so I felt it was logical to assume it was something I did after the last -R failed that fixed my issue, which was one of the '1-2-3 ...' Hope that clarifies

 

I'd say 3. or 1., or 4. () but not 2. FYI among the (many) things I tried when I was getting verify errors was to change my signalling method from Cable Select to Master/Slave (jumpering). But I can only guess that if you had an angled connector (not properly seated) or something that might have created an addressing problem that caused the process to fail at a specific point. Or wrt Page File that your memorysize-vs-pagefileneed was such that again a specific memory size became an issue.

 

Sounds a fair analysis to me. Thanks for your thoughts. I don't claim to be an expert on any of this, and am definitely not looking to get into a debate about what issue I had, but just felt the right thing to do was to report my experience on the forum in case it helps anyone else.

 

Thanks again,

 

Phil

[laserfan]

I don't claim to be an expert on any of this...

Neither am I, but I can Google with the best of 'em, and I have patience 2nd to no one!

 

Thanks for clarifying. You'll probably never know (as I don't know what specifically fixed a Verify problem I was having, but it is indeed fixed) but my money's on the mysterious Paging file, by your description of what you did.

 

FWIW I'd also been having some BSOD problems which felt Pagefile in nature, having tried putting it on a diff. drive myself, but in the end have put it back on C: and it's working fine so I'm not looking back. I never noticed any speed improvements w/using it on another drive anyway.