What does locking the drive do?

[drfsupercenter]

Every time I would use ImgBurn to burn, it would try to lock my DVD drive... and since I'm always using programs like Windows Media Player, it would just sit there and do nothing.
And because of the way my computer handles ImgBurn, you can't taskkill it. It will still "run" and lock up my DVD drive.

So I turned "lock the drive when burning" off and it appears to work fine... what exactly does that do? I just don't want to have to keep closing Windows Media Player/iTunes/Zune software just because I'm burning something.

[Chewy]

all three of those programs are malware in my opinion, they shouldn't be trying to access your dvd burner at all, unless imgburn has exclusive "rights", then anyone of those programs could hose your burn

I have a similar problem with doing a video conversion, the conversion, even in low priority mode wants exclusive rights to my codecs, and if I try to play a dvd or an avi then all hell breaks loose.

Altho imgburn is relatively resource friendly, it's best to let it have the drive locked.

[blutach]

For 10 minutes of your life, let ImgBurn have control of your DVD drive.

Regards

[soup]

For 10 minutes of your life, let ImgBurn have control of your DVD drive.

Regards

YEAH, what he said.

[Dan]

Yeah, what they said. You should be happy it locks the drive, it's likely saved you from lots of coasters.

You should try one of those nice junk free music software that works fine while using ImgBurn.

[drfsupercenter]

I've never had a coaster when it isn't locked...

But what exactly does it DO? When the drive isn't locked, if you click on the drive in My Computer, it says "please insert a disc into drive E:", so obviously programs can't use it...

@Chewy Windows Media Player always accesses your optical drives, I guess it likes to jump the gun when you put a DVD in...