Tech: Trouble with Nero and SCSI

Subject: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 02:59 AM

This may be one of those questions that's unanswerable without a personal encounter (kind of like the phone calls I get: "What do you think my baby's rash is?"), but I'll give it a try.

I'm running Windows 98SE on a Compaq Presario laptop. I recently bought a CD burner that came bundled with Nero Burning ROM. Actually, I guess it's Nero Express. The burner (Mad Dog Dominator model ME-320X, which Nero sees as an ARTEC WRR-52X) is connected through USB2 and runs at 52x. I'm using "music" CD-R's, as data discs don't seem to support the 52x speed.

It was working just fine, then suddenly it stopped working. I don't think I added or subtracted any devices, drivers, etc. in the interim. I've narrowed down the problem to this: when burning a CD (actually it's happening in the simulation mode too), everything works fine until it finishes all the tracks and starts to write the lead-out. Then there's a "SCSI error" and that leads to a buffer underrun.

I tried the Nero website and they suggested deleting a few unnecessary drivers in the Windows\system\IOSUBSYS folder. I did that, and it didn't help. I've tried downloading the latest version of Nero and reinstalling the USB2 driver. I've sent a message to Nero, including the log file, but in the past they've taken weeks to reply.
Here is the last part of the log file:

6:48:07 PM        #31 Text 0 File WriterStatus.cpp, Line 115
         start writing Lead-Out at LBA 186767 (2D98Fh), lenght 0 blocks
        
6:48:14 PM        #32 SCSI -1013 File Cdrdrv.cpp, Line 1215
        SCSI Exec, HA 1, TA 0, LUN 0
        Status:    0x04 (0x01, SCSI_ERR)
        HA-Status   0x00 (0x00, OK)
        TA-Status   0x02 (0x01, SCSI_TASTATUS_CHKCOND)
        Sense Key: 0x05 (KEY_ILLEGAL_REQUEST)
        Sense Code: 0x10
        Sense Qual: 0x02
        CDB Data:   0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
        Sense Data: 0x71 0x00 0x05 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x0C
                    0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x10 0x02
        
6:48:14 PM        #33 CDR -1013 File Writer.cpp, Line 333
        Buffer underrun
        
6:48:14 PM        #34 Text 0 File ThreadedTransfer.cpp, Line 222
        all writers idle, stopping conversion
        
6:48:17 PM        #35 Phase 34 File dlgbrnst.cpp, Line 1655
        Simulation failed at 52x (7,800 KB/s)
        
6:48:17 PM        #36 Text 0 File Scsicmd.cpp, Line 406
        SCSI not using temporary buffers
        20 out of 20 temporary buffers allocated
        

Existing drivers:
File 'IoSubSys\SCSI1HLP.VXD': Ver=4.10.1998, size=19270 bytes, created 4/23/1999 10:22:00 PM
File 'IoSubsys\NEROCD95.VXD': Ver=4.5.0.14, size=39882 bytes, created 3/11/2002 11:55:38 AM
File 'IoSubsys\DRVWPPQT.VXD': Ver=3.10.36a, size=228223 bytes, created 4/23/1999 10:22:00 PM
File 'IoSubsys\STLVSD.VXD': Ver=1.30       , size=41109 bytes, created 6/7/2000 12:00:08 AM
File 'IoSubsys\CDFS.VXD': Ver=4.10.1998, size=59133 bytes, created 4/23/1999 10:22:00 PM
File 'IoSubsys\ESDI_506.PDR': Ver=4.10.2225, size=24430 bytes, created 2/2/2000 5:46:04 PM
File 'IoSubsys\CD_READ.VXD': Ver=1.2.0.0, size=9878 bytes, created 12/2/1998 4:23:22 AM
File '..\System\Vmm32\Ios.vxd': Ver=4.10.2222, size=69570 bytes, created 4/23/1999 10:22:00 PM
File 'IoSubsys\Disktsd.vxd': Ver=4.10.2222, size=18809 bytes, created 4/23/1999 10:22:00 PM

Registry Keys:



Anybody out there know enough about this stuff to help?

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 03:17 AM

PS, I did recall some other potentially helpful information. (The rash is itchy and it looks like little red bumps!)

(1) It works OK when burning MP3 files (let's not go there...), so I'm pretty sure the problem is with my computer's CD-ROM drive.

(2) Before this problem started, I noticed that Windows CDPlayer was starting to play music CD's automatically, where it hadn't before. I think that started the last time I ran Norton Win Doctor. I found the (well-hidden) method for turning off autoplay, and did it, but the problem with Nero persists. Still, I think that might be where the problem lies. Maybe there's some other adjustment I need to make in CDPlayer in order to get it to stop interfering with Nero at the SCSI level. But that's just a guess. Maybe it's chickenpox.

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 04:30 AM

Hey, I fixed it! It seems there are two file types, "Audio CD" and "Audio CD Playback", and I'd only canceled the autoplay feature for the first one. (Because, of course, that was all the Windows Help file told me to do.) So I changed the other one, and it still didn't work...but then I rebooted, and it did. Cool!

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 06:48 AM

Oh, well....worked on simulation but not on burning to a disk: "Could not perform EndSession". Help!

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 10 Jun 03 - 11:58 PM

At the risk of being annoying....refresh, please!

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 12:01 AM

Mark are you a DENTIST???

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 03:34 AM

Mark -

The most likely thing I can speculate is that if you're still running Win98SE, your machine may still have "plain vanilla" USB port(s). Even though the CD burner is USB-2, it will slow down to the older USB spec if the machine's port doesn't support the newer high speed. The difference is between (theoretical) 10MB/sec and 100MB/sec data rates, although actuals usually run about a third to one-half of the "rated" values.

Prior to USB-2, USB CD burners were limited to about 12x due to this slower data rate.

Even if your burner is rated at 52x, it won't write faster than the rated speed of the blank disk you're using for that burn (Nero won't let it). 52x blanks are available, but they're rare in my local market, with 32x and 48x the most commonly available. Nero does give you the option of burning at any rate lower than the lowest of the burner/disk ratings, so you might try setting back to something like 10x or so to see if it's just a data-bus rate limit. Even at 10x, an 80 minute CD (700+ MB) burned as a data CD shouldn't take more than 10 minutes or so.

You should be able to tell if your machine has a USB or USB-2 rated port by looking in Control Panel/Device Manager. I'd have to resurrect an old machine to check details on the quickest way to get there in Win98, but you should be able to find it fairly easily.

If you do have an old USB port, you can get plug in USB-2 port adapters fairly reasonably, and they should be a Plug-and-Play installation with Win98 - although you will have to go inside the case.

If you find that you already have USB-2 on the machine, there's the possility that another USB device (printer, scanner, ext HD, etc) that's to the older spec may be dragging the bus speed down intermittently. Although that's not supposed to happen - it can, so it'd be another thing to check out.

John

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 07:27 AM

Thanks, John. No, it's not a USB problem. My machine does have USB-2, which surprised me, since I got it about 2 1/2 or 3 years ago. The thing is, everything was working perfectly: I could burn CDs at 52x, no problem. Then I did SOMETHING, I suspect it was running Norton Win Doctor, and that must have reset the flags on CDPlayer to autoplay, and that's what seems to have caused the problem: CDPlayer would apparently not relinquish the CD to Nero. I thought I had fixed it by resetting the Audio CD and Audio CD Playback file preferences to disable autoplay. But I think something else must have happened, with CDPlayer or something else, so there's still something (scuzzy) interfering with the burner's SCSI connection, because the logs keep saying SCSI_ERR. Based on the cryptic information in Nero's FAQ's, it might be one of the .vxd drivers...but I'll be damned if I can figure out which one of the dozens of those is causing the problem. Any other thoughts? Unfortunately, Norton's repair history doesn't seem to go back more than 24 hours, so I can't figure out what it was that I might have done.

Aloha,
Mark

No, I'm not a dentist, GUEST--did you say that because this is like pulling teeth?? I'm a pediatrician.

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: hobbitwoman
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 08:55 PM

Mark,

I had a lot of trouble with Nero when I first started using it. I don't know if any of what worked for me would apply to your situation but for what it's worth:

1. Make sure autoplay is disabled - but you've already done that.

2. Make sure you've downloaded all the upgrades to Nero... the solution may lay in one of them.

3. Don't run any other programs while you're trying to burn... use Control-Alt-Delete and turn off everything but Windows Explorer and SysTray (I hope that's right - I've since gotten a new computer and I'm using Windows Media player to burn now so it's been awhile - at any rate, turn off your virus protection, firewall, and other non-essential programs.)

4. Here's the thing that really clinched it for me - unplug all your other USB devices (i.e. printer, scanner, etc.) from your computer when you're burning. For some reason having them plugged in saps a lot of RAM and you might not have enough to burn.

5. If you can, try setting your burn speed back to 4x. I find that even on my new computer, this gives the cleanest, most consistent burn.

6. Stay away from Nero's "tech support"! It will damage your brain cells! LOL!

I hope something here proves helpful to you! Good Luck! :o)

Annie

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 11 Jun 03 - 11:00 PM

Thanks, I'll try those suggestions. I'll keep you posted...unless my computer blows up!

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: GUEST,Inept 2.
Date: 22 Aug 05 - 10:44 AM

Mark hope you managed to sort things out. I am in a complete muddle with all things nero..

1.Never had a problem burning cds until today, have only ever used nero to burn.

2. Been upgraded to windows xp recently and now nero won't play ball. It just tells me that either:

a) another application is using the device..check my imap????????

b) or it tells me that i should insert a clean disc..the discs i am trying to use are new, and I have let a pal try one, there is no problem with the dics.

c) Although I am just trying to reburn stuff that has previously burnt no problem, it tells me that the file format isn't supported?

3. I have also installed anti virus recently.

4. Sometimes when I try to go into nero via the desktop icon, it automatically goes to Real player One..although when I check what is running on my system, it doesnt show real player one as in operation.

5. I can sometimes get as far as pressing 'burn', and then it reads the buffer? But aborts due to write error?

6. Have looked at nero technical support and it doesnt mention my problems, in fact I can barely understand any of it.

Anyone else had these problems and if so what did you do, other than scream, I have tried that and it doesn't work.

       Thanks hopefully. ( In words of one syllable please.)

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 23 Aug 05 - 12:59 AM

I thought I recognized this title! This is apparently one of the threads that got jumbled in the recent "troubles."

John in Kansas is probably the best one to answer your question, but one suggestion I would make would be to disable the antivirus program you just installed and try again, and see if that makes a difference. Another would be to make sure your CD-R's are labeled "music"--Nero and other programs can be finicky about that. They also tend to burp when you feed them CD-RW's.

Beyond that...present affiant knoweth naught.

Good luck!

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 23 Aug 05 - 03:43 AM

The Nero Burning installation CD is burning a hole in my cupboard shelf, I just can't get on with the damn thing. I use a system that was bundled with my computer which sometimes works and sometimes of course it doesn't. I too get the insert a new CD into the drive sign when I've put an unused one in the drive, just can't figure it out.
Giok

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: GUEST,inept 2
Date: 23 Aug 05 - 07:35 AM

Oh well I feel better knowing it's not just me being me! It is getting infuriating, last night I tried to burn about 15 times and it worked once? I lowered the burning speed and that did the trick, but then it gave up the ghost again.

I daren't uninstall the anti virus thingy because the last time I tried to uninstall something it was catastrophic and I had to call a computer fixer over to undo my self made mess.

The blank cd/r's are definitely a good brand, but it has now started telling me I am trying to burn onto a cd rom? Honest I'm not. I will give it one (or five) last attempts and get the computer fixer back again. Hey ho.

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: mrTibbs
Date: 23 Aug 05 - 08:16 AM

Do you have CD and CD-RW drives installed? Is Nero trying to burn to the wrong one?

Otherwise .. has XP recognised your CD-RW drive as a CD-ROM hence refusing to write to it?

Good luck


Tony

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: GUEST,inept 2.
Date: 23 Aug 05 - 08:55 AM

Uuum I know this sounds dumb but how do I find out if I have CD and CD-RW drives installed? What do I press to find out? I managed to burn once yesterday, so assume I may have them though?

It definitely was working OK prior to XP. Am making a strong coffee and building myself up to another try.

The oddest thing is that when I try to burn sometimes it goes through all the motions eg checks the discs and reads the buffers, then starts to burn and aborts at about 10%. It just says 'burn failed'.

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 Aug 05 - 12:25 AM

I'm still puzzling over what might be suggested for fixing things, but to find out what's on your machine, with XP, is pretty simple.

For a summary, Click Start|Programs|Accessories|System Tools|System Information. That will give you a whole bunch of information, although you can't "fix" anything there. If you click on one of the branches of the information tree that's displayed, you can print the info for that branch for your techie, or to refer to later yourself. I would suggest that you DO NOT PRINT with the "top line" selected, since for a typical WinXP system that will use close to 1,000 pages of paper.

For more specific info, right click on the "My Computer" icon that should be on your Desktop. Select "Properties." On the window that opens up, click the "Hardware" tab, and then click the button marked "Device Manager."

Alternate: Start|Settings|Control Panel and double-click on "System." Select the "Hardware" tab and click the "Device Manager" button. This will open the same "Device Manager."

In Device Manager, you can right click on something and choose "Properties" for info, or you can double-click to open a window for the item. You should be able to tell here what Hardware is installed - or at least what WinXP is calling it - and also what "driver(s)" control(s) its operation. It should be noted that WinXP plug-and-play (PNP) often "recognizes" a particular device by a generic name, and may install generic drivers, so you may not get accurate brand names and model numbers.

With "optical drives" you do need to be very careful about getting accurately which of the mix of capabilities your individual drives display:
CDROM can read CDs
CD-R/W can read or write "writable" CDs
CD-RW can read CDs, can write to writable CDs, and can read/write/rewrite to the rewritable RW style CDs
This usually works - Although the terms are "standardized" there's some variation in usage.

If the original front panel is visible on the drive in your machine, you can also look for one or more of the standard "logo" markings that should tell you what the intended functions are. The logos are "standardized," but there are numerous combinations and you may see some variation in how they're written.

John

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: GUEST,inept 2
Date: 24 Aug 05 - 07:48 AM

Thanks John I have been on a voyage of discovery!

I have found in 'sound and audio devices' that I have:

ARTEC WRR-52Z (DVD/CD-R)
and
ATAPI 52xCDROM (DVD/CD-R)

Now, when I try to burn using nero, it does give me the option of choosing one of the above two drivers. I have tried both and neither will burn successfully, they both start fine then fail at about 10%.
Should I assume that because I am trying to burn audio cd that I should only be using the ARTEC one, because the ATAPI one has CDROM written by it?

Also why does Real one player kick in when I try to burn? Should it be doing that? If I uninstalled real one player would everything go kaput?

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 Aug 05 - 01:59 PM

I probably have had as many problems as anyone with CD and DVD, and haven't found any simple answers. My impression is that most of the difficulties come from the multiple programs that can use your optical drives competing to be the only one that can use them.

Real Player is notorious for setting itself up as the default player for anything that's "media." Windows Media Player seems to be a little more trainable, but still competes. Despite, or perhaps because of, media industry complains about "piracy" there are multiple programs and plugins that may attempt to "get copyright information" for your use or to connect you to "information sites" to get track data, or that may assume that you want to connect to download their junk anytime an optical drive gets turned on. Any program that can access an optical drive has to be a suspect when there is interference with a disk burn.

If you can get through the ad-hype and commercialization aspects of your media programs, the useful advice is pretty scant.

Viruses, worms, adware, and spyware can interfere with anything on your machine, so you need to be conscientious about scanning and removing any such stuff.

AV programs are frequently accused of interfering with CD burns, so you may want to turn the AV off while burning. Unless you're pushing the limits on burn speed, most AV programs will not cause a problem unless something else is slowing things down. The milliseconds required to scan each file that's read shouldn't tax the burn buffer except on an otherwise marginal setup. You probably can leave your firewall turned on since - unless one of those helpful programs is involved - all the burn processes are internal to your own machine.

Unless your drive is very new, there may be firmware updates. There have been "quiet changes" to the CD specs that may require updating of the ROM program that's loaded in your drive to burn to "new spec" blanks. Blank CDs generally will NOT INDICATE whether they are to the new or old versions of the spec, so buying the same brand doesn't guarantee that the disks you bought yesterday are the same as ones you got 6 months ago. Firmware update usually can only be obtained from the manufacturer of your drive, which may not be what PnP reads when it decides what driver to install on your machine. (In the case above, ARTEC may be a manufacturer and may even be the one who made the drive - or not, ATAPI is a generic spec and probably doesn't indicate who made the drive. The only way to be sure is to find the makers mark physically on the hardware.

The same changes to CD blanks may require driver updates. These are somewhat more generic, and places to check and download them are a little easier to find. If possible you should get driver updates from the drive manufacturer.

Especially for DVD drives, mechanical reliability is ridiculously and notoriously poor. While many drives last a very long time, it's not uncommon for mechanical problems with an individual drive to cause "deterioration in function." Multi-capability drives frequently lose DVD burn first, DVD read soon after, but may still be able to read and even burn CDs for a while. The disk rotation speed for DVD is much higher than for 1x CD (normal read) and for DVD burning the speed must be very stable. A drive may be unable to provide the stability of rotation speed needed for DVD burn, even though it can get the speed needed to read the DVD. The same situation applies to CDs, particularly at high multiple burn rates, but the lower speeds can usually be obtained with sufficient stability for a bit longer.

Of course, any spec of crud on the laser lens can interfere, so a cleaning disk occasionally may help.

Windows PnP is pretty good, especially in WinXP; but occasionally it may detect an "error" during boot and substitute a generic windows driver for a device for which you installed a better one. Driver files seem also to be somewhat susceptible to file corruption, so you may have the right file name but a few bits splattered in the file. If you have a driver disk for your device, the common procedure is to go into Device Manager and delete the drive, then reinstall the one you want. Sometimes just deleting the drive and rebooting, letting Windows PnP find a "suitable driver" will help.

The bottom line is that if there's a simple fix, or even a standard troubleshooting procedure that works, I haven't found it.

John

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Aug 05 - 11:42 PM

On my older computer I was having trouble with Nero for a while when I tried to copy directly from one drive to the other, because of some internal setup. I needed two of something when I had only one. The answer was to load whatever I wanted to burn into a folder on the hard drive, then take it from there and burn it to the CD. Based on that experience, the question arises: are you burning from resident hard drive files or are you copying (and burning) directly from one CD to another?

Let me backtrack a bit, though.

Did you have Nero already on your computer with another operating system, and then install XP? Which XP are you using? XP "Home" is a wishy-washy thing that I'd upgrade to "Pro" as fast as possible. I haven't worked with the "Media Center" version, though one would hope that it would play nicely with programs like Nero.

At any rate, if you upgraded to XP over another Windows OS, I would suggest uninstalling Nero and reinstalling it, so XP is a full participant in the installation process of this program. Then try burning.

Good luck.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 Aug 05 - 12:55 AM

SRS makes a good point - or a couple.

Upgrade to WinXP has generally had problems if you just overlay the upgrade on top of Win98 or another earlier version of Windows. The recommended procedure has been to remove the previous OS and make a clean install of WinXP. It can be done as an "update," on top of something earlier, but one risk is that new XP compatible drivers won't get installed if an earlier driver is already there.

To get a clean installation, you often need to reinstall programs after the new OS is up, so that their little hooks can be properly logged in the the new Registry that WinXP creates while you're making sure that any drivers, codexes, etc appropriate to WinXP get installed.

I've recommended to many people that they get WinXP Pro, and forget about the "Home" version of anything Microsoft. While my prior recommendation was based more on tech reports than on personal experience, I've recently had the task of rebuilding an XP Home/Works system due to a total failure of the Hard Drive (for a child of mine who didn't take my advice - on several items). The Home versions may be okay for granny-at-the-carehome who just wants email, or for those whose life consists of beer, football (either nationality) and downloading mp3s, but for those who actually want to use their computer, it's inadequate (IMNSHO). In fairness to the "Home" crap software, the rebuild also had to contend with a system built by a fly-by-night company whose support pages were obviously written entirely by MBE's in the advertising department. We'll let them remain anonymous, but their initials were "Gateway." (again not impressed).

If you're already installed and running, I would NOT RECOMMEND starting over by reinstalling Windows. Removing and reinstalling a problem program, as SRS suggested, is sometimes helpful.

It is recommended practice that you compile your intended CD content in a single folder, preferably on the same drive that has your burn program, before starting a burn. Most programs, and specifically all Nero and Roxio versions I've seen, do allow the option to "copy to hard drive" as a step in the burn setup; and this may be sufficient.

You do need sufficient open space on your hard drive for the burn program to manipulate things; and since Windows puts limits on how much space an individual program is allowed to use, the disk space available to the burn program may be much smaller than what Explorer shows as free on the drive. Some programs have trouble using the temp space that's available if it's not all in one contiguous block, so defrag frequently. (It's not nearly as painful in WinXP as it was in Win98 if you use the recommended XP NTFS drive format. With FAT32 may remain a bit troublesome.)

Note that I've mixed two drive space needs. The space needed to compile the files you want to burn is one issue. The temp space the program needs to run efficiently is a separate issue.

If you get really desparate, WinXP has built in CD burn capabilities. I haven't tried doing it their way, but if you go to Start|Help and click on the index tab you should be able to find the procedure.

Generalities again; but that's about all I've found for media problems, unless you want me to quote some of the advertising hype.

John

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: GUEST,inept 2
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 10:59 AM

Just wanted to say thank you for all the help given above. I have windows pro, and tried to do as much as I could understand from all the advice given. I also bought CD-RW instead of the CD-R discs I had been trying. I have no idea what part of the advice worked, but I am now a success story. Nero seems to be working. I didn't uninstall anything and did try the burner that comes with windows pro, but had no luck there and can't remember the error messages...there have been so many! But fingers crossed all seems to be hunky dory. Thanks for your time and patience.

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From:
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 04:21 PM

Great news! Glad you were able to get it to work. No matter, just goes to show what perseverance will do for you. Congratulations!

Subject: RE: Tech help: Trouble with Nero and SCSI
From: mike putt
Date: 18 Sep 05 - 05:34 PM

I have to say i find nero a heap of sh**e I have ruined more blank cd's than i have recorded on to with nero, Like hobbitwoman I record onto windows media player and then burn onto disc, at first it was a pain but I soon realised that i had all my favorite cd's available on my pc while i worked (maybe thats the wrong word )