AndyH

I suppose the whole thing is easy enough once it gets into one's consciousness, but it isn't obvious to someone who has not had to deal with it. It does not really come up while installing the program nor when doing any particular project, it is just an option a couple levels down in the menu structure. It must default to something that works adequately if one doesn't need something special. I can only assume that I changed the default for some reason on the first machine but never thought of it on the new one. I think it would be useful, and probably not too complicated, to put in a warning message. The easier one would be just to add permanent text, perhaps in red, on the dialogue where one is asked if one wants to continue the disk. It could say something about, before starting to write, checking, or making sure about, the file system matching. Perhaps more useful would be an automatic program check as to whether the disk's file system is or is not the same as the current program setting, and a warning message if it is not.

I've now done enough experimenting to determine: <>Starting with new, blank media, everything seems to work properly on the new computer. <>Adding another session to disks created on the old computer loses everything beyond session 1. <>Session 2, 3, ... could be read on the new computer before an additional session was added; after adding a new session, only session 1 can be read. <>CDBurnerXP sees all the files of all the sessions, but Windows Explorer sees only session 1. <>CDBurnerXP does not seem to be able to do anything with the files except list them. It cannot copy them to somewhere else for me. This is true even for disks on which Windows can still read all the sessions. Version 4.3.8.2631 was used on the first computer, and initially on the second computer. Version 4.3.9.2783 is now installed on the new computer. Both do the same thing. Having worked out by experiment how things now work, I can proceed. I have two difficulties however. (1) I need to find a way to retrieve the data of the lost sessions of several disks. (2) I have many disks that I cannot now use, even though they have significant free space remaining. I can compensate in my record keeping, skipping to new disks, but it is not convenient. There are some other CDBurnerXP errors that I described in my first post. They don't really effect me, however. I just noticed them while trying to get my difficulties straightened out.

My use for CDBurnerXP is writing multi-session data disks. Somewhat suddenly, adding a session to an existing multi-session disk results in only the first session's data (not the last session's) being accessible. My use of CDBurnerXP started last January when I put together my first Win7 machine (64 bit Home Premium) after a long run on Win98. This worked well as far as CDBurnerXP went. Most data was written on DVDs, but I continue to create some multi-session CD-Rs, with an audio CD (written with a different program) being session one. Recently I built a new Win7 computer. The first computer was mostly used hardware, about six years old. I kept having intermittent hardware issues. This second machine is mostly new hardware. The DVD drive (ATAPI iHAP122 9 to CDBurnerXP (manufactured by Lite-On)) was transferred from the first Win7 computer. It was purchased new in January and had worked since then without problems. It has an IDE interface. The audio CD-rs are written with an old Sony CD-RW drive. This second computer' OS, unlike the first one, started with a Win7 SP1 install DVD. I had never installed the SP1 update on the first computer because the download was just too large for my dial-up connection; maybe these difficulties are somehow SP1 issues. The new system is also 64 bit Home Premium. The first time I added a session to an existing DVD on the new computer, the program displayed an error message at the end of the write and verify process. It said that the verify operation had expected XXX files but had found only YYY. XXX was the number of files already on the DVD, from earlier sessions, plus the new files. YYY was the number that were just added. In other words, it "did not find" the files it had just written, it counted only the files written in earlier sessions, on the first computer (which it could not possibly verify since it has no access to those files' sources). However, the Burn Progress window messages claimed that the correct number of files (i.e. those just added) had been verified. This was the third session for that DVD. The first two sessions were written earlier, on the first Win7 machine. Windows Explorer finds only session 1 on the DVD. It does not see the files of session 2 or 3. However, the DVD properties dialogue does display the correct amount of space used and space still free. Windows Explorer does see all files of all sessions on a number of other previously written multi-session disks that have not been modified on the new Computer. I assumed there was some media problem with that DVD disk. However, when I put the disk back into CDBurnerXP, the program window displays all the content that is supposed to be there (from all sessions), at least as far as files within folders go. I cannot find a way to retrieve that data from the DVD. The data files displayed here by CDBurnerXP are not based on any compilation file. I never save those and the earlier sessions were written on the other computer. Today, when I attempted to write another session to a different existing multi-session DVD, the same thing happened. This was session #5 for that particular DVD. I then checked the web and updated to the latest version of CDBurnerXP (from 4.3.8.2631 to 4.3.9.2783). I installed the new version over the existing one. I did not manage to find any discussion of my particular issue on the web site. I then created a test DVD, writing various miscellaneous files to a number of sessions. After each session, I renamed, on my hard drives, the top level of source folders that I had used, in order to hide them from the program. This was done to mirror the condition that the folders and files from previous sessions are not normally on the computer when a new session is written. Between sessions, I removed the DVD from the DVD drive and rebooted the computer, just to create some discontinuity. For one session, I first changed the system date to two weeks in the future, to see if that had any effect. The test DVD seems fine, so perhaps I can proceed as I wish if I just avoid adding sessions to any of the disks written on the first machine (but why is this necessary?). However, some peculiar things still happen, so I am not sure if I can really trust the program, and I still don't know how to recover the data from the two screwed-up disks. One peculiar thing that happens is the number of files discrepancy error message at the end of writing every added session (verify expected XXX, found YYY). I never noticed that on the first Win7 computer. Another peculiar thing happened when I attempted to recover the "missing" sessions by copying the DVD to hard drive. This required "whole disk" MDS files rather than an iso file because there are multiple tracks on the DVD. I see that the web site troubleshooting page has a thing on copying disks that says "Note that you can only copy data discs with an ISO file system and that CDBurnerXP does not bypass any copy protections" but the mds files option for multiple tracks (multiple sessions) is there in the program. It just doesn't seem to be working. For three tries, the program started the process and wrote a 5KB file to hard drive, then the screen went uniformly gray (not black or blue). There was no response to keyboard or mouse. The computer's front panel LEDs did not indicate any activity. At least once I let the machine alone for more than 10 minutes, but nothing changed. Each time I had to use the hardware reset button to force the system to reboot. Then I tried the same copy operation with today's good multi-session test DVD. It did almost the same thing except that the screen turned black instead of gray, and had many vertical white lines on it, top to bottom. Since Windows will read, and copy from, different session of that test DVD, I think the reaction when trying to copy the disk with CDBurnerXP is probably not caused by a defective DVD. When I was setting up for the second session of the test DVD, I turned on logging in CDBurnerXP. I am unsure if the log tells anything useful. I will attach it if I can. I will also attach one of the 5KB files from my attempts to copy a multi-session DVD. If there is something I can do to try straightening this out, please let me know. So, your board will not accept the extension .mds so I changed it to .txt but it is not a test file.