CD Burner broken

[Tigerlilley]

I thought I'd ask before jumping to the OMG SECUROM conclusion.

The way I usually copy things to cd, is by simply dragging and dropping.  I don't use/have Nero or anything.  This has usually worked fine, except for today where I have got "Windows has encountered a problem".  It's just a small pop up box with no details whatsoever about what the problem is.

Any ideas about what I should do? Is this the usual SecuRom practice?  The only reason I haven't actually removed SecuRom yet is that I've had a problem with the RegDelNull download.  I'm going to try the EAxis version of removal kit.

Is there any other reason my burner could be playing up like this?

[Inge]

OMG SECUROM!!!

[Tigerlilley]

Goddamnit.

[phyllis_p]

Have you tried rebooting and then attempted the burn again?  Sometimes Windows is just finicky.

[dizzy]

There's also the slight possibility that you got a bad disc.

[Tigerlilley]

Phyllisp: You have a really hard name to spell.   And no, I didn't, I'll give it all another go when I get home.

Dizzy: I thought about that, but would a bad disc cause a windows error?

[Argon]

I had problems with my DVD/CD burner a while ago after playing some securom games, tried everything including contacting securom support (they game me bs about how it shouldn't have done anything). Only way I got it working again was to blow away Windows and reformat.

[phyllis_p]

Phyllisp: You have a really hard name to spell.   And no, I didn't, I'll give it all another go when I get home.

Is this better?  I'd actually been thinking for some time of getting rid of the final "p" (which is the first letter of my last name), but "phyllis" is apparently already taken. 

ETA: It just occurred to me -- is it just the name itself?  You can call me Phy if you want.  I don't like it when people call me that in person, but some friends on another forum have been calling me that in print for years, so I don't mind.

[Tigerlilley]

I'm not sure what it is actually! I just trip over it a lot, much checking and rechecking.  Hehe ok, Phy sounds easier

[nocomment]

/off topic/ - I think it was the p on the end.  My minds always registered it as phy lisp, which doesn't compute somehow.

/on topic/ - I second the idea that it could be a bad disc.  I get a surprising number of those.  Nero gives various unhelpful errors when that happens, so I could see windows doing the same thing.

[Annette]

This is happening to us too. My son decided he wanted to burn a cd, and of course it didn't work.
The computer that is having issues does have Securom on it. But as it does not have BV or H&M I'm guessing that it is an older version of Securom brought in on another game.

So we moved his files to my computer, which has BV and the latest patch (so I'm guessing the latest version of Securom) and it worked perfectly. So I can't blame Securom after all.  I wonder if the cd/dvd player on the family machine is dying and this inability to burn is just a symptom of that. I do know that the drive is several years old, the computer has been rebuilt around it.

Maybe yours is also dying Tigerlilley?

[lordrichter]

If it was SecuROM, it probably would not have just started happening "today"... unless you just installed a game with SecuROM "today".

Microsoft came out with a fix pack on Tuesday, I believe.  Any chance that this happened after a Microsoft Update?

[dizzy]

If you remove SecuROM and it then works, then it was probably SecuROM.

[Tigerlilley]

If it was SecuROM, it probably would not have just started happening "today"... unless you just installed a game with SecuROM "today".

Microsoft came out with a fix pack on Tuesday, I believe.  Any chance that this happened after a Microsoft Update?

I have a grudge against Microsoft Updates.  I haven't tried to burn a cd since Securom, so will remove that and try again.  Will also get a new disc.  Ahh computers.  Fun stuffs.

[Li'l Brudder]

R0M'D!!!11

[mistymage]

One thing you can also try is deleting your IDE channels drivers (if you have them).

To find them go to start->my computer->cd drive->properties->hardware and then properties again, drivers and uninstall them.

reboot and windows will reinstall them.

This is what I had to do to get my burner back.  I have burned music and photos so far (they play back/can hear and see them just fine).. and am in the process of burning a back-up of my Grease DVD (which plays just fine on my pc).  My Sonic burning program and CDBurnerXP are both broken through a missing .msi file but so far the 3 programs I dl'd for burning DVDs  (DVDFab, DVD Shrink and BurnAware.. all from majorgeeks.com) are working.. once it finishes and I test it I'll add that info to this post.

Ok .. so I burned the disk.. and it worked almost perfectly.  Almost because my pc is saying it is a blank disk and won't play it.. yet it will play on my other pc  Hmm.. guess I'll have to do some more digging around to see what the deal is and fix it. 

~misty

[Celestard]

I thought I'd ask before jumping to the OMG SECUROM conclusion.

The way I usually copy things to cd, is by simply dragging and dropping.  I don't use/have Nero or anything.  This has usually worked fine, except for today where I have got "Windows has encountered a problem".  It's just a small pop up box with no details whatsoever about what the problem is.

Any ideas about what I should do? Is this the usual SecuRom practice?  The only reason I haven't actually removed SecuRom yet is that I've had a problem with the RegDelNull download.  I'm going to try the EAxis version of removal kit.

Is there any other reason my burner could be playing up like this?

Since no one else said anything.  It could be that DLA is turned off.  DLA is what makes it possible to drag and drop back and forth to your cd burner.  It could be that SecuROM turned it off.  SecuROM does not like DLA.  DLA stands for Drive Letter Access or something or other, and it comes with Sonic Solutions.  Many people have had to turn DLA off in order to use their drives with SecuROM.  In your case, SecuROM probably turned it off for you. Isn't that nice of SecuROM?