My disc drive has stopped burning DVDs. What should I do?

Q I have used Pinnacle Studio Plus 9 for some time and, apart from the odd glitch it has worked fine. Recently, though, I’ve found it runs into problems when burning to DVD. At some point during the process a message appears saying that disc burning has failed.

A look at the disc shows that burning has taken place, but there is no lead-out so the DVD will not play. I tried using rewriteable discs instead but got a different message, saying ‘invalid media’. I only use quality, branded discs.

Also, I have uninstalled and re-installed Studio Plus several times and even installed a different copy of the program that I happened to have, but to no avail. My PC is a Mesh Elite Prestige Plus running Windows XP, which was specially made with video editing in mind. Any ideas?
Graeme Trim

A You’ve already tried several of the things we’d suggest but you didn’t tell us if you can still successfully burn discs using a different program. Windows XP and Studio Plus 9 are now both long in the tooth, so we’re guessing the computer is several years old - so the cause could be a failed drive. The DVD drive could even be incompatible with rewriteable discs (many early drives were).

Regardless, as Windows XP doesn’t have a built-in DVD-burning ability, you’ll need a tool to test if the drive is still working: if you don’t have something installed already (other than Studio Plus, obviously) download Burnaware Free. It doesn’t matter what you burn (though we suggest trying to fill a disc, for a thorough test) but if disc-burning fails still, we suspect the problem is a faulty drive.

If not, it’s possible that the Studio Plus application is failing to keep up with the computing power required for the time it takes to burn a movie to disc. Basically, the DVD drive may not be receiving the smooth flow of data it needs to continue with the burning process – a situation known as a buffer underrun. Buffer underruns aren’t common on modern PCs because technologies have been developed to cope with them but on an older PC, they can be expected from time to time. Indeed, their occurrence may become more frequent if the PC’s performance deteriorates, perhaps because the computer is trying to do too many things at once.

Another suggestion is to ensure the PC is running no other programs when burning a disc. We also advise using Disk Defragmenter (click Start followed by All Programs then Accessories) to ensure the hard disk is running as efficiently as possible.