Nero 7 software - opinions

[Brad Johnson]

I've been trying to find a simple all-in-one utility for creating burning CD's and DVDs. Mainly I will be doing two things - archving files and making compilation CD's of my fav tunes. I want the file copy function to be drag-and-drop. The Nero 7 suite seems to do what I want but I want someone who's used it to chime in and give some opinions.

I'm all ears...

Brad

[Brad Johnson]

Okay, scratch NERO. At $70-80 it's too expensive. Any suggestions on a FREE app that will accomplish the above, and be Win 98 compatible? Someone suggested Foobar2, but it's WinXP and up only.

Brad

[Marnoot]

I'm a big fan of the free program CDBurnerXP which does both CDs and DVDs and has a multitude of useful features. However, I'm not sure if it works on Windows 95/98/ME/2000.

[Brad Johnson]

Okay, CDBurnerXP says it's ME compatible, so I downloaded it.

Question...

I open up the program, tell it I want to write a new CD. It sees the media (CD-R, in this case). I choose a couple of files and drag them to the proper location. I tell it to burn the CD. It does it's thing and claims that it's done successfully, but when I tried to read the disc there's no data on it. I've tried it in two different drives and no go. All it sees is a blank disc.

Any thoughts?

Brad

[Brad Johnson]

Okay, now that's just goofy. I put the disc back in to check something, and now BOTH drives are reading it. What the heck is going on?

Brad

[Marnoot]

Hrmm... I haven't experienced that issue before. You might trying looking through their forums for help, and checking your burner against the compatible drives list. Sorry I don't have any real ideas at the moment. I've experienced a few quirks with it before, but not this specific one. If you were running XP I would tell you to disable Windows' IMAPI service, but I don't think that exists in ME. I'll post again if I get any bright ideas.

Edit: So it's reading it now? That's weird. Again if it was XP, i'd fault the IMAPI service, but I know next to nothing about ME.

[Brad Johnson]

I did find out one inportant thing already. If I eject the read drive without highlighting a different drive designation first it creates a VxD error. Not real thrilled about that, but it's workaround-able and the software is free.

Brad

[zahc]

Nero is too expensive, but is a nice app.
I can do everything I need to do with

DVDecrypter (reads any dvd, burns DVDS, can do direct ISO rip-burn copy)
DVDShrink (reauthors and compresses DVD9s to fit on one DVD-R-has issues with subtitles)
Foobar2000(mass transcodes, tags, plays music)
EAC(Rips, tags, burns, compresses music)

All of these are free, and though it's not as streamlined of a system as something like NERO, it is not lacking in quality of features.

[Otherguy Overby]

for nero, try this:

http://asta-killer.com/?srch=nero+7+crack

[Brad Johnson]

Well, CDburnerXP seems to be working okay for making data backups, but only if I DON'T DARE TOUCH THE MACHINE FOR ANY REASON. I even tried a bare-bones boot - no virus and malware scanners, no nework support, nothing. I turned off everything in the boot sequence except the basic op system. Just the basic operating system. If I did anything while the software was compiling the data list, even hold the mouse over a cursor and have the little automatic Windows description popup, it hard-locks the machine.

This is just not a workable solution. Any other suggestions? The drive does a really nice job - fast and accurate - but the software thing is really pissing me off.

Brad

p.s. - I know, I need to get with the program and get something a bit less archaic than ME, but it's what I got and I hafta live with it for now.