My Memorex 4x DVD DL burner has worked fine for about a year. However, when trying to burn some songs for the kids' CD player, it just produces a blank disc with no visible burn on it. Then, when trying to burn a DVD from a back-up on hard disk, it also produces a blank disc. Thinking that perhaps the pre-heat laser has died, I got an LG 18x DVD burner, slipped it in, and tried to burn -- it, too, generates nothing but blank discs. Nothing is visible on the disc surface. I'm using Nero 7.7 to burn, on Windows XP Pro SP2. Nero reports nothing wrong -- it claims everything went fine, and the buffer never reached 0 (thanks 10,000 rpm drives :-) So my guess is that I've installed some kind of mal-ware, possibly as part of copy protection for some game, that prevents burning from actually happening. What should I look at? How do I fix it? Recently installed apps with copy protection of some sort include: - Oblivion (direct2drive version) - Microsoft Flight Simulator X - Planetside (the downloadable version) - iTunes 7 - 3ds Max 9 - DVD-Cloner IV - Nero 7.7

It could be StarForce (more likely), I once got it from XIII.

Or it may be related to your Power Supply and Video Card, avoid connecting the Video Card and any drives with the same cable, I currently have problems burning Video DVDs, and used to get blue screens of dead when I had my hard drive on the same line as the card.. I have no spare power lines though [sad].

Thanks for the suggestion. My video card has its own line, and I have a nice 580 W power supply driving an Athlon X2 and a 7800 GT (i e, nothing too extreme).

I checked for StarForce, and found nothing; I also ran the remover, which said no StarForce drivers were included.

I have previously installed Daemon Tools on this machine, but un-installed it again as it wasn't a good match for what I wanted. Could this have screwed something up?

have you confirmed that the "simulate only" option is unchecked in nero? or maybe the current writer is your actual dvd writer (nero has a default dummy drive when it can't find proper hardware)

That's all I could think of that makes nero seem to be burning while in fact it is just simulating a burn or using its dummy drive.

hope this helps

You know, that's probably what it is -- burning to an image, rather than the drive. I feel there's a suitable Homer Simpson quote to use at this time :-)

Quote: Original post by hplus0603
Thanks for the suggestion. My video card has its own line, and I have a nice 580 W power supply driving an Athlon X2 and a 7800 GT (i e, nothing too extreme).

I checked for StarForce, and found nothing; I also ran the remover, which said no StarForce drivers were included.

I have previously installed Daemon Tools on this machine, but un-installed it again as it wasn't a good match for what I wanted. Could this have screwed something up?

Yeah that should be enough power but that's one cause of random burns not completing. I always check that first too since I had tons of problems with one of first burners I got years ago and it was due to flaky power supply.
Since I've run into this problem several times before I'll explain what caused them in my case and maybe it will help you sort out things.
1. Weak power supply
2. Upgrading Nero-it's great when it works but every now and then if you use a specific version you'll get burns that don't complete etc. You'll have to closely look at release notes to see if it affects your particular burner. I just saw it happen with my cousin's new dvd burner. It won't finish any burns with nero unless he updates his copy to a specific version or higher. Once you find a version that works for you stick with it since that's one less variable in your equation.
3. Nvidia nforce motherboard-especially if you install the nvidia ide drivers will cause failed burns for some and I know nforce570 and serial ata dvdburner definitely don't work. I had mysterious failures burning with my plextor sata burner and stopped trying since my new intel core2 motherboard isn't on plextor's compatibility list and they said it never will be but would you know it works fine with my older nforce4 amd motherboard though!
4. Cheap media- you do know that if you buy cheap media you could end up with only 50% of your disc burning successfully so it will also drive you nuts since you don't know if your burner is dying or not so to rule that out get some decent disk from sony and see if those give you any problems.
5. Drive may really be slowly dying-if you burn disc on a constant basis or say in the hundreds of disk range this might be the case since I've had a plextor and sony die on me not long after only having them for a year. Only way to verify this is through a hardware diagnostic test which plextors have or like sony see if they have software that let's you test if your burner is working correctly from hardware standpoint. I don't know about memorex though?
6. New software installed-most difficult to troubleshoot for me anyways since I'm always installing new software,games,sdk's,etc. Some software is known to interfere with nero or cannot be installed at same time as nero and if they are will also cause flaky behaviour during burns. This includes things like sony rootkit,starforce,etc that who knows what they do to your computer. I also remember certain software messing up your registry so bad that it'd make your cd/dvd drives disappear and you need to search ms knowledgebase for fix but it sounds like you don't have that since you can still see your drives.

For this one google is your friend...

Thanks for the list -- it might go in an FAQ :-) Three of them apply to me: Nero upgrade, Nforce motherboard, and upgraded other software.

As it happened, it was a Nero upgrade that did it. Upgrading Nero apparently re-set the preferences to "burn to image" instead of my DVD drive, and I just plain didn't notice. I thought it was weird the disc didn't eject when it was done, though :-)

On the happy side, this made me upgrade from a 4x DVD burner to an 18x burner as part of trouble-shooting. Now if I could only find another open PATA port so I can use the old drive as the secondary optical...

Quote: Original post by hplus0603
Thanks for the list -- it might go in an FAQ :-) Three of them apply to me: Nero upgrade, Nforce motherboard, and upgraded other software.

As it happened, it was a Nero upgrade that did it. Upgrading Nero apparently re-set the preferences to "burn to image" instead of my DVD drive, and I just plain didn't notice. I thought it was weird the disc didn't eject when it was done, though :-)

On the happy side, this made me upgrade from a 4x DVD burner to an 18x burner as part of trouble-shooting. Now if I could only find another open PATA port so I can use the old drive as the secondary optical...

*If I'm not mistaken* you can get a cheap PCI card for some parallel ATA ports.

Quote: you can get a cheap PCI card for some parallel ATA ports

Absolutely -- I have one of those for my storage server. That's one option in how to find an open PATA port. Thanks for the suggestion!