Ok heres the deal, this morning to free up some space i decide to burn a load of data onto dvd. burn first disc, check it and its fine
burn 2nd, check it, nothing on disc (under properties it says.used bytes 0,free bytes 0 and the disc is unusable
so i try again, same files and the same thing happened.
so i burn an .avi to cdr no probs
BTW using nero reloaded
wrote another cdr no prob then tried again but with different files all .avi but written as data and same thing happened nothing on the disc but i can see clearly that there has been something written to the disc and nero says no probs
so i put the first disc back in and what do u know there's nothing on it
so i put a disc i gave to friend for me and it reads fine (same disc brand as me) so i put disc 1 back in and it reads fine the data is there
so i finnaly resort to installing intervideo disc manager etc and i try with that and even tho everything seemed to be writing fine it turns out just the same
WTF is going on

first of all: are you verifying you discs? If not, then DO! The 'Burn process completed successfully' message is about as reliable as a politicians promise.
I learned that the hard way.

OK to me this is getting more wierd , to you it may make sense.
I checked the verify disc box and tried again, sure enough when verifying it shows lots of read errors early on and failed to verify disc. But u know what all the data IS on the disc and all the files work fine too
I have not had that option checked before , tho i always check my cdr's by putting them back in and checking the movie plays Ok.
It took longer to verify than write
Gonna try again with different files and is there any way i can use nero to verify the other discs that seem to have no data on ?

well first you can put it in the dvdr and go to the 'recorder' pulldown menu in Nero. Hit 'Disc Info' and see what it says there. (is there anything written, or is it a blank disc? Is the session propperly closed etc.

Managed to burn 3 data disc letting nero verify them and all came out ok
tho i had to put one in 2 or 3 times but it read in the end
for your help
BTW put one of the unreadable discs in and it says
DVD Session...................Capacity in use.......................1 MB
DVD+R......................Available Capacity.........................
Sessions ............1...............Book Type....................DVD ROM
Tracks.................1.................................................................
Track Start Lenghth Mode


then in the box is

DVD Session
Session 01 (1MB)
Track 01: 0 2kb, Data (mode 1)

And that it

well there you see that only 1 mb was burned on the whole dvd. Probably just the header or something.

Now the reason why it fucks up could be numerous. Start the normal troubleshooting routine first with checking that you have the latest Firmware update for your burner, then the latest Nero of course. Then try out some other disc brand(s). See if you can find a list of what brands are recomended for your burner. Google for other people who might have the same problems, and see if they found a solution.
Cheap discs are often cheap for a reason...

If all else fails, you might wanna start looking for a new burner. You can always try to use the old one in a different machine first, just to be on the safe side...

Thanks John Doe have have done the first 3 u suggest and i agree with the last point but havn't tried google. TBH i think it may b the burner as it does a lot of work with cdr's . I think i need to get a cheap CDRW and a decent DVD Burner and only use the DVD for DVD
Anyway any excuse to get a new burner

Sounds like your ide channel is f*cked.

Make sure your fastest drives are always on primary and imo, DVDburners should never be on an IDE channel with a hdd... certainly not one that has heavy access.

You also need to check for sure your dvd drive is in DMA mode, you can check this in devise manager somewhere. Basically if your in pio, switch it to DMA. If it refuses to switch, go in device manager and uninstall your IDE channels, then reboot. You'll now be able to switch out of PIO mode.

Also, don't use shit DVDrs, branded doesn't mean they are good. If you go to somewhere like 121cdr.co.uk, even if you don't buy, if you click more info they tell you what dye each disc uses. The best ones tend to be G05

Cheers Spud not sure if i understand the first bit but i know my HD and DVD are pluged into the MB in different slots and the HD is the primary (blue socket)
Have tried looking in device manager but cant find anything that look like an option to change from PIO to DMA ( whatever they are )
Totally understand about the discs tho. Will check out 121 as I usually get mine from local PC Fair and i expect to get a few duff discs but what s the deal with the dye ?

basically, your ide channels in my opinion should be:

Primary Master: HDD0
Primary slave: HDD1
Second Master: DVD-rw
Second Slave: CD-rw

Or something like that... I really wouldn't like to put:
Master: HDD
Slave: DVD-rw
especially not if that hdd has heavy disc access since your likely to get CRC whilst burning.

PIO/DMA is in devise manager:
IDE ATA controllers
|-Primary
|-Secondry

double click one of those two, then go to advanced settings. They should all say some kind of DMA access mode. It basically means your CPU isn't handling that resource directly, you've got a DMA controller on your ide chipset that needs to designate writing and reading from those channels.

You see if your CPU gets clogged down, which if you run windows is near constantly, it will screw up writing to the drives, so you'll get burn errors. If you use the DMA controller which is supposed to be used, these are less likely.

Dye is quality, its basically the contruction of the surface that allows the laser to burn data in. Shit quality dye means its unresponsive to exactly whether the writer is burning data or not, and this inperfection means that when forexample it should have burnt a little bit of data in, the dye didn't allow this, and you get a bit that's wrong. Error checking can take care of substantial amounts of this, but with shitty dye means more wrong bits burnt, which means more chance of the disc being unreadable.

So generally, for cds and dvds the darker the colour of dye, the better the quality. however, this isn't always the case, but certain media factories just put more money into their facilities which means better quality technicians working on better quality components making better quality discs.... like everything technology based, the better the resources and people, the better the quality

OK the good news is that it is in DMA mode
Still not sure i understand the first bit tho
is it the boot order or how they are connected to the MB or somthing else completly ?

You have 2 ide channels on your motherboard (a ribbon cable coming off each) - a primary and a secondary. For each of those you can have a master and slave, and these can be set by the little link on the back of the drive - with 3 options (Master, Slave or Cable Select - abbreviated to MA, SL, CS).

Ignoring the Cable Select, make sure you have the last device on a ribbon cable as master, and set that device with the little link as such - the one before it a slave with the link and it's position. Set the secondary accordingly - Master/Slave as Spud described. So:

Primary - master (last on the ribbon cable, set the link to MA)
Primary - Slave (first on the ribbon cable, set the link to SL)

Secondary - master (last on the ribbon cable, set the link to MA)
Secondary - slave (first on the ribbon cable, set the link to SL)


As for DMA - this is an old concept. Remember IRQs, nobody looks at them anymore as windows handles them pretty well now. But an IRQ is a request to the CPU to carry out that device's computation - like a hey look at me, do my thing. With DMA a disk device can bypass this and get exclusive access to memory, without the need for an interrupt to the CPU - hence Direct Memory Access. Much quicker and less CPU overhead as is the case with PIO.

the easiest way to tell is when you reboot, it will list your drives in the order I/killing listed, so watch to see how you got them set out.

A little note on PIO, its not as good as DMA, its best to avoid it because windows isn't very good at it. I once had my plextor drive stuck in PIO and all it could do was get read errors, the buffer was all over the place (little bar in nero). So I had to go into device manager and remove it, and then it worked fine. Was a known bug with XP apparantly.

OK understand that. rebooted and everything is in right order and cables are right too
Dont know if this is relevent but I have something called a patin-couffin configuration, it came with copy to dvd. which i uninstalled months ago. I havn't had probs burning up till now

Any chance you switched Nero between DVD and Cd?

Problems getting worse. 2 cdr's failed to verify
Eveythings plugged in right and it's booting in the right order
Any ideas
BTW should S.M.A.R.T be enabled or disabled

tried having the burner on an IDE cable, alone?

before i do any dvd burning off nero i make sure all setting in preference is set to max

like

yellow marker and red marker are set to 120min

and click on expert features tab

and setting there i set over burn to 86min

enable dvd over burning to 4500mb

and enable all supported format

and if you got a set of vob files that wont burn in nero i use imgtool then i make and image of that dvd then burn with dvd decrypter works like a charm

not sure if it will help but some things i have come across

okay, its sounding quite bad, there's few things to try,

hardware:
1) IDE, burner by itself, uninstall the ide controller before doing this
2) new ide cable, they can fuckup, particularly with poor case cooling
3) new DVD drive; they are moving part devices, and very prone to death, more so than most other components. DVDwriters have a life span of 6 to 12months for poorer brands, a couple of years and beyond for quality brands. Of course, this is circumstantial,a crap one can last for years, and a good one can fail, but its like any electrical equipement, they aren't made to last.

software:
1) uninstal nero, update and use a new ASPI layer driver
2) use a different software, how do isos burn with DVDdecrypter
3) have you been updating your drives firmware? If not, do it now, dvddecrypter can be used to identify what firmware you have, see the examples on their site on how to get to that option.

can try this see it it works http://www.dawnload.net/cdr_software/cdr_tools/aspi.cfm might not