Problem Burning CDRs

[gm2015]

I’m having a problem burning CDRs with my NEC 1300A (IDE), which is five years old. I also have another computer with an Optiarc 7200, but I would like to figure out why I’m having a problem doing CDRs on the older computer, which I still use.

For the first five years, I had no problems, but now, most of the times when I insert a blank CDR into the NEC, I get nothing at all. The Windows Autoplay box doesn’t appear. If I open Nero 6.0016 and try to burn a CD with that, I’m told to insert a blank disc. Time after time, I’m told to insert a blank disc when one is already in the drive.

If I try to use ITunes to burn the CDR, I get the same thing - I’m told to insert a blank CDR.

If I insert a recorded CDR into the drive, the Autoplay box appears and I can play the disc. If I insert a DVD into the drive, I can read it, and if I want to record to a blank DVD-R or DVD+R with Nero, I can do that with no problem at all.

On the increasingly rarer occasions when I do get to record to a CDR, there are problems. A couple of times, Nero went through the entire burning process at 4X, and then I find that only a small amount of data was actually copied to the disc. On a couple of occasions, the burn was aborted early, with a Nero message saying that it was unable to perform the fixation.

The last two times that I was able to record to a CDR, once with Nero and once with Itunes, the drive copied all the data to the discs, but I got a cluster of C2 errors in the same spot on both discs, at the 50:00 mark. The CD Speed disc quality test shows the same large downward spike on the graph for both discs.

When this problem first started about three months ago, I thought Nero might be the problem, so I removed it and did a clean install, and then everything seemed OK again. Since the problems started again two weeks ago, removing and then re-installing Nero did no good at all. If Nero is the problem, why do I have trouble with ITunes as well ?

For the last few months, I have been using Maxell Music CDRs, which are made by Taiyo Yuden. I have been using mostly TY discs for the last five years, with few problems, except for a short period a few years ago when Fuji TYs weren’t being made right.

Since then, I have been using Sony Walkman TYs and now these Maxell Music TYs, without any problems until recently. I just bought a few Fuji (made in Taiwan) CDRs just to see how my NEC would react with them. When I insert any of these Fujis in my NEC, the NEC reacts as though I haven’t inserted anything in it, just like what I usually get with the Maxell TYs.

With the Optiarc drive that I have on my other computer, I’ve burned about ten of these Maxell TYs without any problems. I haven’t even gotten a single C2 error.

Is there a software problem, a problem with the drive or with the discs? Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be?

[Dartman]

Thats a very old burner, maybe the lens is dirty and needs to be cleaned or the drive may have some dead components after all this time and is just bad.
If you have time and all that you can open the case and try cleaning the lens and see if it then works. I resurrected a very old CDR burner that was so dirty the lens looked gray and cloudy till we gently cleaned it with a soft cloth and alcohol, after that it worked like new again.

[gm2015]

Thanks.

I thought about buying a new IDE drive, but before I do that, I'll give this a try.