I feel like ranting tonight. I have made 10 coasters tonight trying to write 3 fricking files on a CD. Either this drive is a piece of crap or Easy CD Creator is garbage.

Ive only ever had bad luck with EZ CD.

I hate to say it but...
uh.. now I use the built in XP cd write utility.

The interface is a little wonky, but I've yet to have a failure. Thats with an HP 9700 burner.

I'd say Easy CD Creator is your more likely problem.

I tried dragging and dropping in explorer and then the CD won't eject and I shut down the computer and stick in the paper-clip to get it out and boot up and the CD shows blank.

What other programs are there to use?

I have never had a problem with Nero Burning ROM.
www.nero.com

Seconded. Nero is the best. And in recent versions, Nero Express gives you a super easy interface. So you don't have to worry about all the advanced options if you don't want to.

yeah what everyone else said
Plextor - Good
EZCD - Bad
Nero - Good

I'm downloading the demo version now and will let you know if I was able to burn or make more coasters. I'm glad I bought a pack of 20 today, most are history already.

Thank you very much guys. I have finally burned my first CD (yes, I am very behind the times)

I just want to add another EZ-CD is garbage vote.

Xcdroast (front-end for cdrecord) under Linux works fine with my Plextors (and Lite-On's and ...).

Cheers!

I'm getting ready to remove Easy CD crap from my computer and will pay for Nero when the demo time is up. If I had used it to begin with I would have saved $6 or so on coasters.

And it didn't even load crap on system startup files like EZ CD crap does.

Xcdroast (front-end for cdrecord) under Linux works fine

Loser. I just use mkisofs and cdrecord directly. Who needs a GUI?

Yep, I use Arson now, which is also a front-end to cdrecord, etc. It has a more Nero-ish feeling to it, basically Nero for Linux. Never had a coaster from it.

(chuckle)

Did I mention that my burner is on a headless server? That might have something to do with it, too.

Ditto. But that's what exporting the display is for. I usually control the burning machine in my rack with my secondary laptop.

I just use mkisofs and cdrecord directly. Who needs a GUI?

What, you didn't write a shell script to burn the CD automaticaly on your headless server? I just put the mp3s in a directory and it wavs->normalizes->burns all with one command. (Data? On a CD? Isn't that what FTP is for?)

Matthew

And it didn't even load crap on system startup files like EZ CD crap does.

Amen! Another wonderful Nero user! I love the program. I even ordered the boxed version. Quite nice. I also have its MPEG2 decoder and it makes pretty good DVDs.

Anyway, enjoy. Nero is wonderful.

ok im going against the trend, but my opinion is that Nero is crap, and nero express is worse simply cause of the fact that it only recognises it's own multisession disc's, quite often when I burn disc's with another program, and like to add files, using nero it will not import the previous sessions cause it didn't write them, it will write my file and rewrite the TOC. And lo and behold all that is on the disc is my one file I just burned GRRR!!...

I use CloneCD for cd to cd copies, and RecordNow Max for files etc... (and since this came with my pioneer dvd writer)..
works quite well.

cheers,
Jai

In reply to:

---

Loser. I just use mkisofs and cdrecord directly. Who needs a GUI?

---

Bitt, I have a wonderfull image of you! Somewhere between my A-Level computing teacher and my old electronics professor at Uni.

Greetings!

Easy CD Creator used to be decent, until they got spun off into Roxio. EZCD4 worked, was stable, good. EZCD5 sucked. They broke the product, and have never gotten it working since.

I have not tried Nero, but I use CDRWIN by Goldenhawk. The UI is not as nice and windows friendly, but it was the first package (even before EZCD) to allow decent control of audio burns. It is quick, easy and gets the job done. And you can build compex CD formats (negative times, multisession CD-Extra, etc.) very nicely.

Edit - Historical note: I have been burning audio (and data) CDs ever since the dark ages of 19" rack mounted single speed burners (2x if you had the ISO image on a very fast hard drive) using a dedicated DOS workstation...

My two pence:

I actually use both EZ CD and Nero, each for different things, because I find that each one has strengths and weaknesses. I have both installed on my home PC.

On our "Master shipment files" server here at work, we use a very old version of EZ CD (version 3 or 4 I don't remember) and a very old Yamaha 4x external SCSI burner for our final shipment discs. Reason: Everything is rock stable, never makes a coaster, and we always only burn discs one specific way.

Really? Which version of EZCD? A while back I tried installing one version and it insisted on my removing every other bit of CD burning software and anything remotely related.

At home, I think it's V5. Not sure. Nero was installed second, maybe that has something to do with it.

Nero has a utility that allows you to run more than one piece of CD burner software, as some of these apps load files into memory before Windows is even finished starting. I thought this utility had to be installed and configured separately from Nero, but perhaps that is not the case.

Ok, a question for all of those that recommended Nero. How do I burn a music CD? I have made 5 coasters tonight (I am getting very good at that) trying to burn some MP3's. I get the errors that either the file is inaccessible or different. I have tried making music CD's and a data CD and neither have worked. I have dropped the folders in and tried creating the folders through Nero Express and I get the same errors. I hate to sound stupid since this should be so easy, but what am I doing wrong?

Maybe it's time to consider that there's something wrong with the drive?, has it been sucessful in creating any working cd's?

I burned 1 data CD that had 3 files. It looked like they were there when I read it. I hope it's not the drive, I've had it awhile and never attempted to burn anything until this week. But it would make me feel less stupid if I can blame it on the hardware instead of the operator