buffer underrun!@#$%*?&

  • Thread starter Thread starter stratman
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stratman

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Can anybody give me a solution on how to deal with buffer underrun with my cd-rw. I had my cd-rw for a year now ( Iomega 4x4x24 ide). It's been working fine until last week when I tried to burn some audio files. I started getting the buffer underrun error message. It seems to burn data files with no problem. I tried burning in it's lowest speed (1x) but it keeps on skipping which causes the error. I eve downloaded the most recent updated drivers but still no help. Is it because my cd-rw is old? Are all cd-rw prone to this problem? Somebody told me about calibrations. Any solutions, suggestions, or infos please. Thanks.
 
Also....

Have you added any new software lately?

Do you have your screen saver turned off?

Are you playing around on the computer when you burn?

Microsoft's Fast Find will screw you up in a lot of ways. Make sure it is not running at all. There may be other software that you might have installed that do things on the computer that could muck things up. If you didn't add anything lately, disregard. But if you did, try uninstalling that software and try another burn. If it burns good, well, you know your problem.

Screen savers suck system resources. I don't know why they are even around anymore. I just have my OS shut off the screen after no activity for a while. Doesn't mess up burns.

Opening app's and files while burning take system resources too. This will definately cause buffer underruns.

How many disks have you burned since you got the burner? You should get at least like a thousand burns out of it.

Ed
 
Tapsa; I did disc defrag and scandisk. still didn't help. Any other suggestions?
 
Sonusman; I did everything that you suggested. Turned off everything floating around on the background using msconfig. No screen saver running. I even turned off the auto insert of the cd-rw. Still buffer underrun.

I don't think I burnt 1000 cds yet.

Any other suggestions?
 
Oh well....

Sounds like a bad burner. They are cheap now so a new one shouldn't hurt too bad.

Sorry to hear.

Ed
 
You say 1000 cycles.
Have you used the same CDRW disc for all these 1000 burns?
That's up around the expected life of a CDRW disc.
The price of these has dropped dramatically since their introduction; far moreso than CDRs.
You say data CDRWs work fine. Does this data consist of large (many buffer fills/file) files like .wav files?

Also you haven't told us what the specs are on your HD subsystem or CPU. The only time I've ever encountered the dreaded BU syndrome is trying to burn with a 5400 RPM HD and a P90 CPU when the HD was a bit too full. Performance of any IDE HD I've owned plummets in avalanche fashion as I approach the last 20% of available space.

What's required for a 1x burn is a steady stream of 150KB/sec from the HD without any interruptions while the buffer is asking for a refill.
A 4x burn bumps that to 600KB/sec.

Have you run the echo reporter to see what your HD can actually deliver? It's free and while not dead nuts accurate does provide a yay/nay opinion with confidence.
 
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