OPTICAL DRIVE ERROR WHEN WRITING AUDIO CDs

[chriswylde]

Hi all. I have a bit of a wierd one. My CD/DVD writer appears to be playing up, it will not successfully create Audio CDs. Ive tried in Sonic Stage (2.0), Media Player, Nero, and the XP CD writing wizard, all to no avail.

It writes DVDs fine, and it writes data to CD-Rs, but not audio files!!!!???

The writer gets some way through the process (it varies, sometimes half way, sometines only one song...) and then returns an error saying it was unable to write a specific track. Ive tried lots of different albums and its always a different track so its not an issue about bad data or anything...

I have a VGN-A117S, with a SONY DVD RW DW-U55A (i have not yet installed the firmware upgrade available on the vaio website). Any thoughts or suggestions gratefully received as i really have no clue about this one!!!

Kind regards,

C.

[kee-lo_]

That is an odd problem.
I would take it up with VAIO Link, as the drive can do data...... I'll have a think if I can think of anything else.

[chriswylde]

oh, and another wierd thing...

when i put the half written cd into my player it actually plays the songs it managed to write???

i thought that the writer had to successfully write both a header and a footer before any of the songs would work???? as the writing is never finishing, i assume no footer is being written but some of the tracks will still play??

i dont know if this helps but thought i would provide as much info as possible.

many thanks again,

C.

[kee-lo_]

It's writing the TOC (table of contents) alright, but it's probably not writing the post gap, or closing the CD so no more writing is possible.

Sounds to me like the laser writes half the disk and gives up.

Have you ever written a full 700MB CD of data?

[chriswylde]

unable to take it up with vaio link at the moment (that was my first thought as well) as you cannot post new queries in the e-contact thingy... will do so as soon as it is back up...

C.

[chriswylde]

have not written a full CD of data... good point (think it was about 100MB that i wrote succesfully). but, i went through so many CD-Rs trying to fix the problem i have run out!!!

will try some more things when i get hold of some cd-RWs... that way it wont cost me a fortune in CD-Rs!!!!

C.

[kee-lo_]

Thought it was back up this morning ? *sighs*
Try writing a full data CD for a test, backup your data.

[chriswylde]

no... just checked and its still down...

i have been fiddling with my write speeds as i thought this was maybe the problem...

there is an option in sonicstage to run a 'test' write. when my speed was up to 16x the test was unsuccessful. i dropped it to 8x and the test said all ok... but when i did it for real the same problem occurred....????

will run a full data cd write test when i get my hands on some more blanks!!!

The DVD writer is a okay as wrote a full disc last night... is this a good sign? or, is the DVD writer separate???

C.

[kee-lo_]

For audio CDs I suggest not burning > 4x as the sound isn't as good faster.

[chriswylde]

was able to write a full data cd of 680MB...

your not going to believe this... i know i certainly dont...

i then thought id have another go at writing an audio cd... and it worked!!!!

im now listening to dave gilmour live on CD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

am i going mad? i have a dozen useless CD-Rs to prove that im not insane, but...!

should i forget this problem ever occurred??? or, should i be worried that it may be some kind of intermitent fault?

\c.