DVD Burner running slow

[Wedgie]

For some reason in the last week or 2 my DVD burner is running incredibly slow, it seems to be reading/burning everything at 1X despite being a 16X speed burning.
Used to take me 2 mins to burn a CD and about 5 for a DVD but everything is taking me over an hour now.
Checked the RAM, it appears OK although other issues have rocked up when running several things at the same time, its a dual core processer.
When Im burning something it doesn't matter what software I use it shows its burning at 16X and says something like "5 mins to go" but then when the 5 mins runs out it shows only about 5% complete and proceeds to take another hour plus to burn the project.
Any suggestions?

[smithy]

That happened to my father in law as well.

Didn't matter if he was using DVD decrypter, NERO or shrink it would always take nearly an hour to burn a movie..

He formatted and it went up to top speed for about a month and went back to the same problem you and him are having now...

Can't explain it,,, sorry.

[Wedgie]

That happened to my father in law as well.

Didn't matter if he was using DVD decrypter, NERO or shrink it would always take nearly an hour to burn a movie..

He formatted and it went up to top speed for about a month and went back to the same problem you and him are having now...

Can't explain it,,, sorry.

Cheers mate, I haven't formatted since I bought it (Feb last year) so that should probably be a start for me.

[firstblood]

Try a restore your pc to an earlier date when it was burning quickly.
I found that that worked when my burning slowed down.

[Kahuna]

I'd try uninstalling the drive from Device Manager,reboot and allow Windows to detect it again.Much less dramatic than a format and worth a go.
Also have you installed any new burner programs recently?Some do not play nicely with others.

[Wedgie]

System restore did nothing.
No new programs added recently. I'll try uninstalling it and see how I go.
Thanks for the advice guys.

[Psyber]

I have never bothered to burn a CD or DVD - I moved straight inti USB sticks and external HDDs - but I gather Nero has always been a problem.

If there has not been a software change or "upgrade", I would check for Registry errors or a full cache, or perhaps for not enough empty space on the HDD, and clean off all redundant files with something like Easy Cleaner.

http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm

[Kahuna]

Have you got this sorted yet Wedgie?I did a quick search on Whirlpool and the most common suggestion is to check you are still in DMA mode,a shameless cut and paste follows--


To enable DMA:

Right click My Computer -> Properties
Click Hardware tab and then Device Manager
Expand IDE/ATA/ATAPI Controllers
Right Click both "Primary IDE Channel's" and the other "Secondary Channels."
Click "Advance Settings" tab.
For transfer mode, select "Enable DMA if possible." Click OK or Apply.
Reboot.

[Wedgie]

Yeah still got problems, checked those settings all OK.

Im going to buy some new RAM as Im only on 512mb at the moment, luckily my PC takes DDR 2 which means it'll only set me back $45 for a gig.
Needed more memory anyway so I'll see how that goes, if that doesn't make any diff I'll run a diagnostic on my hard drive.

[Grahaml]

Ran spyware/virus scans Wedgie? Probably not the problem but you never know.

Most burner issues are software related, not hardware. I really doubt the RAM will fix the problem, but you never know. In fact even if the extra RAM does seem to fix the problem I expect you'll only be hiding the problem. The best advise I can give is to uninstall the burning program you're using and then reinstall it from scratch. Try it again before you download any updates. If it works, then try getting any updates you want to and see how they go. You don't normally get problems with downloaded updates, but if it doesn't install right, or there's a problem with windows somewhere you never know where it might mess up.

Absolute minority of cases the laser is dirty. Very rare, but possible. You could try cleaning with a cleaning CD, but I wouldn't buy one for 10 cents because I think they're next to useless as anything but a coaster. I reckon if you have a faulty laser 1% of the time, .1% of that 1% a cleaning CD will help a little.

[Wedgie]

Cheers mate,
Extra RAM made no difference, Ive used different burning software for same result.
My next step is to find my cords for my external burner and see how that goes on it.
If that still goes slow Im sussing out the Hard Drive closer.

[Grahaml]

If you've got multiple burning programs, then I recomend completely deleting any you don't need. Ideally, you should run with just 1 burning program to avoid software conflicts. And you do need to be careful to completely delete anything you want to get rid of. Sometimes they leave traces behind. Not normally a problem though.

The other thing is if you have the burner and the HDD on the same IDE chain then they can run at less than if they're on separate chains. Especially as your HDD gets more full of crap, as they tend to do over time.

[Psyber]

If you've got multiple burning programs, then I recomend completely deleting any you don't need. Ideally, you should run with just 1 burning program to avoid software conflicts. And you do need to be careful to completely delete anything you want to get rid of. Sometimes they leave traces behind. Not normally a problem though.

The other thing is if you have the burner and the HDD on the same IDE chain then they can run at less than if they're on separate chains. Especially as your HDD gets more full of crap, as they tend to do over time.

Nearly everything does leave some traces, especially in the Registry, which then wastes time looking for things that are not there sometimes. I use Registry Mechanic regularly, and keep turning up references. Many of them may not matter, but some do.