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CD burning software: what are the best options?


riverrat

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Hi Kevin/All,

1) tried the "add system" hardware and the system came back to say no new hardware found.

2) Jim - the system indicated the WDC device was "working properly

3) Kevin - I did the system restore and two things happened:

a. when the system rebooted after going back to a few days before installing the the CD burning software packages, during the restart, the green light on my "E" drive did light up! However, when I went to "My Computer" and looked at my installed drives, no "E" drive showed up.

b. The restore process also gave a report of the fatal error that happened on Dec 1 and I did a cut/past of the Microsoft report, which points to driver problem(s)!:

Error caused by a device driver

Thank you for submitting an error report.

Problem description

A device driver installed on your computer caused the problem; however, we cannot determine the precise cause. To troubleshoot the problem, see Getting help.

Getting help

Depending on which situation is applicable to you, please do one of the following:

If this problem occurred after you installed a new hardware device on your computer, the problem might be caused by the driver for the device. Use the Driver Rollback utility or uninstall the driver.

If this problem occurred after you installed new software, the software might have installed a driver that caused the problem. Try uninstalling the software.

If you don't know the specific driver or software, try performing a System Restore.

Check for updated drivers on the Microsoft Windows Update website.

For information about your support options, visit: Support.Dell.Com

So, the question is, do I use the "driver rollback utility."

I'm also now remembering Nero gave me a lot of trouble with the uninstall, so maybe there are still drivers from that software installed on my computer?

For the heck of it and future reference, if I don't get this problem fixed at home, will be sure to post a brief statement of the resolution of the problem once I get it to a computer repair place.

As always, thanks!

Marla

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I guess I missed the part where you uninstalled Nero. My guess is that Nero wrote over the stock drivers and then upon uninstall took it's drivers with it.

One solution would be to install Nero again, but just don't use the software if you don't want to. It should replace the drivers and the CDrom should show up if that was indeed the problem.

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I guess I missed the part where you uninstalled Nero. My guess is that Nero wrote over the stock drivers and then upon uninstall took it's drivers with it.

One solution would be to install Nero again, but just don't use the software if you don't want to. It should replace the drivers and the CDrom should show up if that was indeed the problem.

Hi Jim,

Thanks. I think I'm going to start this again in the morning, beginning with reinstalling Nero (and GEAR). One at a time and see if any of it works. I was also thinking perhaps some kind of computer virus moved my E drive somewhere? Or is that too far-fetched.

Marla

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I think at this point, when it's not clear if the CD drive is defective or Windows is messed up, the best thing would be to check if the drive works without Windows. For example by checking if the drive is recognized by the BIOS, by trying to boot from a bootable CD (for that the BIOS needs to be set up to boot from CD first) or a bootable floppy with CD drivers (like a Windows rescue floppy).

Your first post made me believe that it was a problem with the CD drivers (messed up by the Gear software), but the fact that the device manager does not display the drives (with an error message) is unusual in that situation.

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Thanks, Jim and Claude.

Yes, my E drive is my DVD/CD R/W drive.

Claude, I'll try your next suggestion once I have some coffee to wake up a bit.

Glad to have a day off from work, but not looking forward to doing another 6 or 7 hours of troubleshooting (though I do admit a part of me enjoys the "game" of trying to fix it with eveyone's assistance) :)

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I wanted to thank all of you for helping me out. I've decided to hang in there for about 2 months until my income tax refund arrives and just invest in a new PC - this one is approaching 4 years old and gets heavy usage. With one CD bay mechanically dead and one DVD bay MIA, as well as needing to add more RAM, I hope this is a wise choice.

So, a big thank you to Claude, Chuck, Jim and Kevin. Instead of spending 4-5 hours a day on the problem at hand with my current PC, I'm going to browse the internet and get advice on what I should get next.

In the meantime, a new 200 GB external hard drive arrived here today and now I can free up tons of space on my C drive. Also, I do have a Sony external CD/DVD drive and that will have to do 'til the purchase of the new PC.

Thanks again!

Marla

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm trying to finally burn these files as a data CD using the WinXP wizard. It looks simple enough. But whenever I click "start writing these files to CD" after selecting that I want to burn a data CD, it gives me an error: "Cannot complete the CD Writing Wizard." I restarted IMAPI in "Services" and set it to Automatic, and still nothing. Is the problem that I don't have enough space on the C drive? I am trying to burn about 610 MB; Windows says the total free space on C: is 770 MB.

Edit: so I install the newly-released trial version of Nero, and now WinXP burns fine. Bizarre....

Edited by Big Wheel
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