Something to try. This seemed to improve reliability with all drive reads/writes--not just CD/DVD drives:
In Windows XP, I completely disable the built-in CD burning
features of Windows XP. I think this is called IMAPI. It's been a long time since I installed and configured Windows XP. However, I think that IMAPI is the term that refers to this built-in CD burning
service.
Most of the time, in Microsoft products, MAPI = Microsoft Applications Program Interface. In the case of IMAPI, I don't know what the I represents.
Once I eliminated this conflict with the built-in CD/DVD burning of Windows XP, I have no troubles mastering and packet writing to discs in XP. If you allow IMAPI to exist, I believe, it's the same thing as having conflicting software on your machine.
To completely kill the CD burning application of Windows XP takes some registry changes, policy changes, and disabling a service or two. Search the web and you'll find a number of articles describing how to do it. Many have encountered this conflict. Many have posted helpful articles about it. Google is my friend for things like this. Just type "disable imapi" into the
www.google.com search engine.
IMAPI in XP was written by Adaptec/Roxio. There's a clue as to why it is troublesome. We know that Adaptec/Roxio software can cause problems with just about all other CD/DVD burning software. Windows XP is no exception.
If you don't kill IMAPI, you must rely on your 3rd party CD/DVD software to do it or you must rely on your 3rd party software to manage the problems. That didn't work for me. Once I killed XP's CD burning, things got much better.
Let me go on about XP, please?
There's a number of things in XP that are considered by Microsoft to be
features. I consider most of them to be
crippled applications with a nasty attitude.
For example, XP uses what's known as
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) for flatbed image scanners. As long as WIA is activated, my Umax scanner will not work with its own driver software.
WIA forces its own driver for my Umax flatbed scanner. However, I discovered the trick for changing the driver to one written by Umax. Now, my scanner works perfectly in Windows XP with the same driver software that worked well in Windows 2000. I also thoroughly disabled the WIA functionality.
I guess what I'm trying to suggest is: When you discover problems in Windows XP, you might first look to see if Windows XP has some "built-in" process designed to take over that function.
In my experience, once I learned to shut down the crippled Windows XP feature involved, I was back to happy computing in many cases.
To tell you the truth, I have to waste so much time killing Windows XP
features, I find it simpler to use Windows 2000 instead.
--vj2k
