Nero "upgrade" is not!

[Chewy]

A suitable substitute for nero will have at a minimum
1. support for multiple burning(just 2)
2. removal of dead air between audio tracks
3. cross fade(robust) between tracks
4. automatic logging
5. boot emulation
all these features are essential to me except for #1
My son uses it. I just verified it could be done.

[Merovingian]

I followed Blutach's advice and tried an InCD file clean of my problematic Nero 6.6.0.18 "upgrade", unfortunately this did not solve the problem even though all reference to InCD related drivers was now absent from the logfile.

Ok, I thought, I'll unistall Nero completely, manually delete the "Ahead" folder in program files, reboot, reinstall 6.6.0.1 then upgrade to 6.6.0.12 (the version I had been happily using before the dreaded 6.6.0.18 upgrade), and everything will be back to normal - wrong.

Well, we're into Twilight Zone territory here, the fault still exists. I did consider that the 6.6.0.18 version may have done something to the disk's formatting that could not be reversed by the older version, so I tried burning to +RWs that had never seen the newer version, same problem.

I would suspect that my standalone was defective, but it quite happily plays +RWs of a movie I burned before the "upgrade" whilst refusing to play a newly burned copy of the same movie burned onto a +RW from the same batch using the same burner, hard drive files, and version of Nero.

All of the problem disks play quite happily on my PC using the BenQ drive that burned them.

My brain hurts.

Coming soon, adventures in non-Nero ISO burns.

[Chewy]

If you'll check you still have a conflicting aspi layer present and that sonic
crud recordnow?

http://www.benq.us/ServiceAndSupport/Drivers/drivers.cfm?product=738

before I pitched that drive I would be tempted to update the firmware,
might help with newer rw's and iso burns.

[Merovingian]

Yes, aspi32.sys and pxhelp20.sys are still there, of course they were also there when I was having no problems with 6.6.0.12. I'll have shot at removing them and see if anything happens.
I still feel the culprit is the (now removed) 6.6.0.18 upgrade, it was the only thing changed between successful and unsuccessful burns.

[Chewy]

you are using the exact same rw's, media code verified?
the older verbatim show a successful burn

repost an unsucessful burn at the bottom of the log

[Merovingian]

The burns appear succesful, but they do not play in the standalone. The first Verb -RW burn log I posted looked successful, but would not play in the standalone.

The only pre-6.6.0.18 disks with movies that I still have the original hard drive files for are TDK +RW's (RICOHJPNW11), so I'm using these as "before and after" reference material. Unfortunately I don't have the logfiles for the original pre-6.6.0.18 burns with these disks.

So, in answer to your request for a log of an unsuccessfull burn, the Verb burn was unsuccessfull in that it would not play in the standalone. All of the disks appear to burn fine, it's the playing that's the problem.

I might risk wasting a TYG02 to see if the problem only occurs with RW media.

[Chewy]

have you tried the unsucessful burns in another standalone player?
this is standard procedure.

trust me it's not the 18 update, nero's been patching 6 for over 2 years
now, sooner or later they gotta get it right(no commento bluo).
I try to burn nasa quality disks that play on anything with that nero
and my benq 1620 is an essential tool(for scans).

[Merovingian]

I'll certainly try the disks in another standalone if I can find one that is happy with +RW. My old standalone (Pacific 1002), still plays my all of my old (pre-6.6.0.18) +RW (RICOHJPNW11), burns, but not any of the new, this suggests to me that the burns/disks are at fault, not the player.

My 1620 gives me 95ish Nero CD-DVD Speed scores with TYG02, it's not so good with RW's (especially after a bit of use), but they have always played OK previously.

Anyway, I've got a BenQ 1640 on order, maybe if I cross my fingers this problem will disappear when I install it

[Chewy]

then upgrade to 6.6.0.12 (the version I had been happily using before the dreaded 6.6.0.18 upgrade), and everything will be back to normal - wrong.

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdmedia.php?selectmedia=1424#comments

if this is your new media?

[Merovingian]

I had been using DVD+RW as that was the only RW type that one of my old burners would support, therefore I have loads of them. My new Panasonic PVR the ES10 will only write to DVD-RW, so knowing Verbs were the best of that type I have started to move over to those. Of course, I still continue to use the DVD+RWs for non-PVR purposes.

[Chewy]

You do know they don't reburn that many times(as advertised)?

for longevity I would have gone dvd-ram and an LG burner.
the format is slowly dying.

[Merovingian]

More spookiness.

Up till now I have been working on my "DVD" PC with the BenQ 1620 burner, but I also have a second PC I use for net stuff, this is a low-spec Celeron box but it has my old hand-me-down NEC 2510 burner in it, I "upgraded" Nero on this box at the same time as my main PC (I'll not do that again!). So, I thought "I wonder if the 6.6.0.18 upgrade banjaxed that one as well?" I copied one set of ripped DVD files I had been using for testing purposes over to this box and burned a +RW. This disk had never seen 6.6.0.18 before and the exisiting movie that was on it played OK in the standalone. In with the disk, burn the test DVD, it will not run in the standalone, arrgh!

So, I uninstalled Nero, but this time I went through the registry and deleted every instance of ""ahead" or "Nero" that I could find then rebooted and installed Nero up to 6.6.0.12. In with another non-6.6.0.18 disk, burn test DVD, success! this DVD plays in the standalone.

Unfortunately, when I repeated the same process on my BenQ box, it did not cure the problem, but it was into the wee small hours by that time and I may have missed a registry entry, I'll try again tonight.

It's funny you should mention DVD-RAM Chewy, I've had Panasonic DVD-RAM drives in all of my boxes since the first full height SCSI LF-D 1Gb models. Over the years the drivers for these puppies have caused me no end of grief in conflicts with other stuff, and I did wonder if it was the present generation that was responible for this latest problem.

Well, at least I now have one box that will burn a RW my standalone can read.

[Chewy]

You really need to reevaluate the RW
concept. It's a variable that is complicating matters in troubleshooting
your present problems.