[smithy]

Hi all,
I'm running XP on bootcamp and have an annoying DVD burning problem.... [MBP 2.16GHz, 2Gb ram]

I had bootcamp 1.2 on my MBP and was burning DVD-RWs at 4x with Nero 7715, and all was fine. I upgraded bootcamp to v1.4 and re-partitioned the drive, reinstalled XP and Nero, but it would only burn at 1x. I found the bootcamp 2.0 drivers and installed that, but it's not helped, I've reinstalled Nero, and installed ASPI 4.71 even though nero doesn't use it (apparently) and none of that has helped either.....I've done all the proper reboots after installing the stuff but it refuses to play nicely.

edit:
- since upgrading bootcamp the trackpad goes fast and jerky while burning is in progress
- i've tried nero 8 too, in normal & express mode - still 1x.
- when i tell it to do a speed test before burning that's fine at 5x but then it burns at 1x.
- i'm using the same media as when it burned ok

what should I try next ...?

thanks in advance,

smithy.

[smithy]

Ok, after what has seemed like an eternity of frustration I finally found out what was wrong: the transfer mode for the optical drive had somehow become reset to PIO mode - either by installing Bootcamp 1.4 or for some other reason that I never realised. (PIO stands for Painfully Inefficient Operation, by the way.)

I'm replying to my own post so someone else in dire straits might find an answer, as I noticed quite a few people viewed the post but couldn't help. The annoying thing is, if your HD had suddenly gone slow, PIO mode is probably the first thing you'd think of but it's never happened to an optical drive of mine, duh.

To see what mode a device is running in , double click it in Device Manager and go to the Advanced tab. Note that when you find that a device sitting there in PIO mode you can try changing the drop-down selector to "DMA if appropriate" but in my case the actual ("current") transfer mode would remain stubbornly in PIO, hence the need for deinstallation and reboot.

Uninstalling the device in the Device Manager then rebooting lets the system re-find the device and set it to the appropriate transfer mode, which in this case is now reported as "UDMA mode 2", and Nero is burning at the proper speed for the media. Hooray!

There's a MS knowledgebase article here with more info, the bit about deinstalling is quite far down and was less confusing than the registry options offered - look for heading, "WORKAROUND" ( basically, highlight the offending device, right click > uninstall, and reboot).

"IDE ATA and ATAPI disks use PIO mode after multiple time-out or CRC errors occur"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472


Hope this is useful to someone,

cheers,
smithy.