DVD Burner Mysteriously Fails 50% of the Time...

Did I mention this is my week for wierd problems already?

There's also a matter of this new DVD burner I installed recently. I forget the brand/model at the moment, so if you need to know, remind me and I'll look it up. It only successfully burns DVDs about 50% of the time. In other words it's anybody's guess whether the next burning will actually succeed or not.

Ok, so the first program I was using was the freeware program DeepBurner. After wasting a rather healthy number of DVDs on failed burns, I figured maybe this is what I get for using a free program. So, to test that theory, I downloaded the trial version of the latest Nero. First burning went without a hitch. So I figured my problem was solved -- then the second burning failed...and the third...fourth worked!

So literally almost a 50% failure rate here, regardless of the program.

This is a DVD-R burner, and I'm always using blank, fresh DVD-Rs (right out of the package every time). They're Kyphermedia brand DVD-Rs.

No error messages, just "Burned failed" (yeah, that tells me a lot). However, Nero at least offered to print out the log that shows the error, which I did. However, I can't make heads or tails of all this mumbo-jumbo I'm looking at (most of what I see are a bunch of hex addresses...again, yeah, great help there).

So, as a last-ditch effort to remedy my bewilderment, attached is that log. Maybe one of you "l33t3r" folks can derive something informative out of it.

Oh, and this is Windows 2000. Drivers are installed. Remember that it does work successfully about 50% of the time, so it's not a consistent problem. No difference in what I'm doing between when the burn is successful and when it fails.

You might try a different make of media and also try burning more slowly?

I am afraid it sounds as if your burner may be defective? Try installing it on a different machine if you can.

Cheers

Sorry AK:
But I have to agree with nihil on this.
Bite the bullet, buy another.............

As a quick and dirty, burn at no more than 1/2 max speed [ around 4x ?]

Had same problem with a CD-RW [Lite-On........RIP :D]
And always use 'branded' media [Imation / Memorex etc]

I used to always get that with cheap media. I got a 100 pack for like $30 off of new egg.
You get what you pay for.

Since then I've been getting TDK, FUJI, Imation, Sony, etc.
I've yet to burn a bad disc.

Oh, and I'm using nero too.

That's what I was afraid of...well, a lesson well learned!

No more Kyphermedia for me...

In my experience Lite-On burners are particularly susceptible to this media problem.

Both my Burners are Lite-on and I havent had any problems, on the other hand I don't buy the cheaper CD's and DVD's....

Also Make sure the burning process has high CPU priority and don't surf AO in the back ground. The burn must stream at a sustained rate and any drops in throughput will fail the burn.

The sampling rate of DVD audio can go as hight as 192 Khz. Set at max sampling size for the entire DVD and is a 9.6 Mbits stream! At normal speed. Sure that doesn't directly correlate to burn times but it's a guage to the processing power needed and data through put necessary.

Before labelling the burner toast, stick it in another machine and see if that rectifies the problem.
IMO it's likely your power use. I've seen this happen a lot if you have fast revving HDDs and a high power eating burner, and a power supply inadequate to the task (and no, just because the sticker says 500W doesn't mean it's up to the task). You can get various power use tools around the 'net, tho most frequently your motherboard manufacturer will provide something that will allow you to monitor your "PC Health" (or something along those lines) -- these tools are designed for checking thermals, but frequently show you power consumption as well.