I have been having trouble burning music or vcd's using normal cd's. I have tried several different makes, Maxell TDK and Phillips, sometimes they work but not often (power calibration error). I have tried using Nero 6, easy cd writer and I have just found out that if I use rewriteable cd's then it works every time. WHY?? Can anybody help me. I have tried contacting the helpline from my computer supplier but they didn't know. .

That's very odd.

Try burning at a slower speed. Maybe your software thinks your burner is faster than it actually is.

If that fails, try contacting the manufacturer of the burner itself (not your computer OEM). You can get the "real" manufacturer name in "Device Manager." (Right-click My Computer-->Properties-->Device Manager).

~psi42

Thanks for the advice, I have tried writing at various speeds from1x to 8x , the speed didn't make any difference. The burner is a Maa cw-8121, I will try and find some advice from them

Thanks for the advice, I have tried writing at various speeds from1x to 8x , the speed didn't make any difference. The burner is a Maa cw-8121, I will try and find some advice from them

Odd...

The only thing I can suggest is downloading cdrecord and seeing if it will burn CD-Rs. At the least, it will provide useful error messages.

cdrecord is a Free (GPL'd) cd burning tool.
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/cdrecord.html

You can download the windows build (note it's alpha) from here:
ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/alpha/win32/

I think all you need is this binary archive:
cdrtools-<version>-win32-bin.zip
Be sure to grab the newest one.


You'll need to unzip the archive into a new directory, fire up a DOS shell window, and cd to the directory, and then you can run cdrecord and mkisofs.

It will be easier to use an iso image you have already created. If not, you can create one with mkisofs.


I have never used the windows version of cdrecord, so I don't know any windows-specific tricks.

However, I would assume the interface is somewhat the same as far as the user is concerned.

cdrecord is command line only... maybe you could find some windows frontend, but right now we need the error messages from cdrecord.

Please post the output of
cdrecord -vv -dev 0,0,0 -speed=08 /path/to/isoname.iso

If you have any problems getting cdrecord (you probably will if you're not used to working with DOS), post and I will try to help.

:)

~psi42

Also, try using the CD-R's you have in a different burner, and try using different CD-R's in your burner. It'n not supposed to make a difference but back when I had an old phillips CD burner, I picked up some CD's that it couldn't burn to for some reason, although theoretically it shuold have been able to.