[RESOLVED] cd writer problem

[birdman]

Had a pentium 133 with win 95 and i used my hewlett packard cd writer (7200) to copy and burn cd's with No problems. I changed to a 466 clone with windows 98 and i can't seem to burn cd's. tried everything and every test i can think of, but nothing works. Is windows 98 my Problem? Please help.

[AlienDyne]

What's your RAM's capacity????

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God created human.
Human created computers.
God got mad and created customers!!!!!

[TheLow1]

Do you get the buffer under run? If you do slow down you copy speed. I run a PII 233 with 160MB of RAM but I can't copy any faster than 4X due to my slow CD-Rom. I run 98 so that is not the problem.

[birdman]

yes i got buffer underrun problems...and even copying from cd to cd. I write at 2x but i will try at 1x.
when i copied a bitmat(about 1mg) it worked fine, then i tried to copy 6megs of data(all on a rewritable) it seized up, then i got the buffer underrun error, and errors reported by output device.
Any advice?

[Grafman]

On any machine, you will get much better performance with burning if you will do a couple of things.

1.If possible, copy the material to your HDD and burn from there. The HDD, being much faster, will minimize the chances of buffer underrun.

2.In the Options or Preferences section of your burning software(EasyCD, etc.), designate a folder for the app to use while burning (I created one and called it simply:CDRecord). Most apps use the wintemp, and since it is used for many other things, this has a tendency to also slow things down.

3. Most generic CDR media is unreliable above 4x. For best results, do your burning at 2x. I know that is slow, but it's faster(and cheaper) than doing it 2 or 3 times to get a good CD.

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[This message has been edited by Grafman (edited February 01, 2000).]

[BAD.IRON]

Buffer under runs means that your CDR buffer is running dry (is allowed to go empty). To avoid this you must shut down all running programs and screen savers to insure a good flow of information to the CDR. Use control alt delete and shut down all programs except systay and explorer. That should fix your problem.

[shawnMt]

What Grafman said. ALWAYS burn from hdd.
Also have the devices (hdd and burner) on separate channels.
shawn

[alf]

I got a brand new 13gig Maxtor hd and can't burn from it without buffer underrun error. Drive works fine for everything else so I dropped an 850meg Seagate drive in and burn from that. No more coasters now. Hardware incompatability probs? If it worked on a p166 thats probably your best bet.

[alf]

oops thats a p133 I see in retrospect.

[crtlaltdel]

Had the same buffer underrun problem with a Sony writer, even when copying the files to the harddrive, recently added a 2.5 gig Seagate scsi drive and use that for the file swap drive, no problems since, no more coasters, must have 10 plus coasters with the old setup, alf's setup might be a good start
had a 10gb maxtor in my original setup and still got underruns, good luck
Just my $.02

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I didn't think Murphy's law applied here in the computer industry

[birdman]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by alf:
hi, I can't use a Seagate drive if it is for scsi because i have ide cables.
I also get other errors other than buffer underrun, i can't seem to copy at all, things just stop. Can it be a conflict with win98 because win98 automatically puts the drivers it wants, instead of letting me put the Hewlett Packard driver. I copy from files directly from my hd. I also tried copying from cd to cd. Need help.

[birdman]

I also get other errors other than buffer underrun, i can't seem to copy at all, things just stop. Can it be a conflict with win98 because win98 automatically puts the drivers it wants, instead of letting me put the Hewlett Packard driver. I copy from files directly from my hd. I also tried copying from cd to cd. Need help.

[alf]

It sounds like you're loading the dos driver in config.sys. Thats not going to work. If the burner shows up in device manager that driver conflict could be the source of your problem. My seagate drive is ide by the way.

[Grafman]

First, make sure that your burner is properly installed (proper drivers. etc).Next, make sure that your burning app is properly installed. After that,
probably the major thing to consider when burning CDs is that it takes about all the resources of damned near any machine. I'm not certain if this is a weakness in Windows, or just a characteristic of the CD burning process. It is extremely important to free-up all possible resources before starting up your burning app. With a 486 machine, I would create a new configuration profile especially for burning, disabling all unnecessary devices, and boot to that config before burning. Also don't use a background for the desktop, disable the screensaver, and have your startup folder as lean as possible. All these things take away resources.

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Are we havin' fun yet?

[RGK01]

Go to your System Prop, Performance, File System, select the CDROM tab and change the access pattern to "No reaad-ahead" then reboot the system. This should solve your problems, copy is a bit slower but works!!