4.6. CD and DVD Drives

The first CD burner I ever saw was the size of a small microwave oven. It took 68 minutes to fill a 68-minute CD, and it produced more coasters than Six Flags. Suffice it to say, things have improved, although after a few minutes of trying to burn a disc in Vista, you'd be hard pressed to tell.

I'll just come out and say it: the CD/DVD burning feature built into Windows Vista just doesn't work. Sure, I'll get some bafflingly defensive emails from a handful of readers, but if you can show me a CD-R with readable data created by Windows Vista, I'll eat my hat.

In theory, it goes like this:

At this point, Windows Explorer will crash. Or, maybe you'll get lucky, and nothing at all will happen (no CD, no messages, nothing).

If this is happening to you, do yourself a favor and skip the part where you try to diagnose the problem. Instead, just use any other CD/DVD burning software to make your discs, and you'll never look back:

• You can burn ordinary data CDs and data DVDs with Express Burn, available for free from http://www.nch.com.au/. If you want more pizzazz, try a commercial solution, such as Roxio Easy Media Creator (http://www.roxio.com/), Ashampoo Burning Studio (http://www.ashampoo.com/), or Nero (http://www.nero.com/).

• You can make audio CDs right in Windows Media Player, as well as Apple iTunes, by creating a custom playlist, and then burning the playlist to a disc.

• You can make DVD movies from your TV recordings from within Windows Media Center.

• To burn discs from ISO image files, as well as create ISO files from discs, use ISO Recorder (free; http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com).

With the proper disc burning software, now all that can go wrong is everything else.

4.6.1. Troubleshoot CD and DVD Playback Problems

Not getting the quality and reliability you expect from your audio CDs and video DVDs? Here are some common problems and possible solutions:

Poor audio CD quality

If you hear pops, squeaks, or clicks in your audio CDs, check your source music files to make sure they sound OK. If the tracks are originally from a CD, re-rip any songs that have pops, squeaks, or any quality problems.

Another cause of poor sound quality on audio CDs is a mismatch between the rated speed of your discs and the actual speed at which you burned your music. If you're using 4X-rated CDs in an 24X burner, or vice-versa, you could have problems. Again, higher-quality media is less likely to suffer from this problem, but if all else fails, get slower CDs or a faster burner.

Volume inconsistencies

If your audio CD plays, but the songs all seem to be different volumes, there's not necessarily anything wrong. This is merely a fact of life when you mix audio files from different sources; some songs will naturally be louder than others. The best solution is to use the volume-leveling feature in your media player software.

In Windows Media Player, press the Alt key, select Tools → Options, choose the Burn tab, and turn on the Apply volume leveling across tracks on the CD option. Or, in iTunes, select Edit → Preferences, choose the Advanced tab and then the Burning subtab, and turn on the Use Sound Check option.

Smudged DVD subtitles

Illegible subtitles on video DVDs (even store-bought discs) are usually caused by a video resolution that is set too low. If your display is set to 640×480 or 800×600, raise the display resolution to at least 1024×768.

Disc won't play in standalone player

Low-quality discs commonly cause playback problems in standalone CD and DVD players. If the disc won't play, or if the audio quality is bad, try a different brand of disc. Avoid the el-cheapo blank discs in the bargain bin at your local computer store, and instead spend the extra nickel on some brand-name discs (I've found Verbatim discs to be consistently reliable).

Another problem that affects standalone DVD players is that of incompatible disc formats. Some older players can't read movies burned to DVD+R/RW or DVD-R/RW discs, so you may need to buy a new player, or settle for movies played through your PC. (The format that seems to be the most widely supported is DVD+R, although your mileage may vary.)

PC can't read disc

Does Windows Explorer hang when you try to copy files off an old disc? The most common cause of this is simply dust. Try gently wiping the disc with a clean, soft, dry cloth, or barring that, your shirt. (Wipe in a straight line, from the center of the disc out to the edge; don't rub in a circular motion.)

Files missing on a data disc

Can't see all the files you burned to a disc, particularly if you've burned the disc more than once? You may've deleted the old files when you added the latest batch of files. The good news is that—unless you erased a rewritable disc—the "deleted" files are still there, only hidden. To retrieve them, you'll need an application that can create a disk image from a single track, such as ISO Recorder (free, http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com). Once you've created the disc image file, you can either burn it to another disc (by itself), or you can open it with IsoBuster (http://www.isobuster.com) and extract the files by dragging and dropping.

The other possibility is that you're reading the disc with an old CD drive that doesn't support multisession CDs. (Each time you burn files to a disc, you're creating another "session," or track, on that disc.) In this case, there's little you can do to make the earlier sessions readable, short of replacing the drive. Luckily, brand-new CD/DVD readers are cheap and plentiful!

Windows Media Player complains about insufficient space

Assuming your arithmetic skills are up to par, and the total length of all the tracks you're trying to burn to an audio CD doesn't exceed the capacity of the disc, it's possible that it's a hardware problem. If you have more than one CD or DVD drive connected to the same IDE controller, they can fight for system resources. To fix the problem, make sure that your burner is the only CD or DVD writer on the chain; if one drive is connected to the primary IDE controller, make sure the other one is plugged into the secondary controller, and that neither is in conflict with another device (such as the hard disk, usually occupying the primary master slot).

None of your discs are readable anywhere

Visit your CD/DVD burner manufacturer's web site and see whether there's a firmware update. Sometimes, a firmware bug will prevent otherwise good discs, written with a good burner, from playing on a perfectly good player. And that's not good.