I have had it – I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to burn a simple f***ing DVD on my computer. Roxio and Nero and all the other DVD burning software that I have tried for Windows just suck and I’ve burnt more coasters than.. Ok. Can’t think of a smart or funny analogy here but I’ve burnt a lot of coasters.
Since we’ve had our daughter, my wife and I have been putting our digital camcorder to good use. I typically capture the movies to my computer before burning them onto a DVD with titles, transitions, pictures and music. I typically use Roxio to burn my DVD and the results are usually hit or miss. After installation, Roxio works fine for a few days or weeks and then just starts burning coasters. So I’ll download Nero and try that and that may work fine for a few weeks before it goes into coaster mode. Usually a simple uninstall and a reinstall fixes the problem with Roxio but that is such a hassle. There are times when that doesn’t work and the typical answer from Roxio support is to rebuild my machine. F*** you – Fix your software so that it works and doesn’t require me to rebuild my machine. In Roxio’s defense, I install any piece of software I can find that seems interesting. I do download a lot of software from any development tool, add-on to utility programs and I must be clobbering something but this is just garbage. Why can’t a program protect its own DLL’s or registry settings or whatever is breaking this
My burner machine configuration is a DELL Pentium 4 (ancient) 2 GHz machine with 1 GB of RAM, Windows XP SP2 and an external USB 2.0 Plextor PX-708UF DVD burner. I own Roxio v7.0 and don’t want to upgrade to v8.0 as I may be facing the same issues. This is enough of a hassle to make me want to buy a MAC. Now that Macs are running a real processor with some performance, it might be worth checking out one of those shiny new MacBook Pros. And if I can run OS X and Vista on the same laptop, that’s a pretty good deal. If only Apple made a Tablet!
Is there any other software out there that will let me burn a DVD without these hassles? There has to be an alternative to this nightmare scenario. If you have a solution that’s working for me, please drop me a line or comment below.
Roxio, Nero, Windows+xp, dvd, software, mac, osx, macbook
Vinny Carpenter's blog 
While I share your apparent hatred of anything Roxio with a passion, I’ve had nothing but great success with Nero.
Maybe ensure your system is free of spyware, viruses, etc., and that it has the latest updates to Windows, drivers, motherboard, and BIOS. If these aren’t current you may be experiencing problems which aren’t the direct result of some fault with Nero.
Nero rules in my book.
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this used to happen to me all the time, i saw a whole bunch of registry tweaks and add-on but none seemed to work for me, what finally worked was when i upgraded my dvd burner to the lastest firmware, to know what dvd burner u have go to MyComputer right click on your burner and choose “properties” and click on the “Hardware” tab there should be a list find the full lenght name of your burner and do a search of firmwares for it on google and that should solve the problem hopefully. siralphred[at]gmail.com
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Hi Alan. I’ve only had 1 issue with Nero 6.x that I got as part of my DVD bundle. My machine is free of spyware unless AdAware, Spyboy and MS Spyware are lying to me and I’ve also upgraded the firmware on my Plextor DVD burner. The weird thing is that Roxio works if I uninstall and reinstall – usually. 🙂 I hate Roxio!
I got a couple of emails from people recommending Nero 7.0 and so I am downloading the latest trial version.
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I use Ulead Software (came bundled with my Pioneer DVD Writer) and have had very few problems after burning about 25-30 DVDs over the last year. I am very satisfied with the various options provided by Ulead. After installing all the latest patches, I have not seen any issues.
You might be surprised that I am using a really old 833 Mhz Dell machine (with 768 MB RAM) and a 20 GB HDD to do yhis job…! (I did not want to install this software on my primary work PC and so used my backup machine). I must admit that it takes way too long to burn a DVD on this machine…! 🙂
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have you ever tried getting support from roxio? it’s almost impossible.
they put you through an endless array of self help pages (which you have to have a password for) and, like every other self help program today, it never seems to ansewer the question you have. all i would like is for them to have is a simple and easily locatable email address that you can contact tech support with about the question you have.
they do have a support telephone line that they want to charge a person $30.00 per hour for (assholes).
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Everytime I have tried to download the Nero trial version, I get the full version which requires a registration code. Fuck Nero. I keep waiting 10 minutes to download it, get stuck, delete it, and try a different site. Get stuck and repeat. Fuck Nero in the ass. I’ll give Roxio a try.
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I’ve noticed that Nero and Roxio don’t work well after updating Windows XP. I managed to remedy
this by clicking Start, Program Files, Accessories and Program Capatibility Wizard. I then followed the
wizard and set the Roxio and Nero back to Windows 2000. That seemed to have fixed my
Nero and Roxio problems. Otherwise nero support is worthless.
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My husband bought me Roxio 8.0 for Christmas to format all my digital photos into a DVD with background music. I’ve toyed with this thing now for over a week, and can’t make heads or tails of it. I’ve went to the manual, as well as to “help”. This software should definitely be made a little more “user friendly”.
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i actually found your blog by way of me hating roxio as well. what a piece of junk! my workaround on windows machines has actually been to run a live linux version, like knoppix, and burn from there. then it’s no muss, no fuss.
however, i have to disagree with your statement on macs. macs have always had higher performing processors than pcs. using the intel platform just addresses some pc compatibility issues, but in reality i see it as a step backwards. now we’ll start to see macs get weird ass errors that you usually just see on win machines.
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http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/burn_dvd_folder_dvd_decrypter.cfm
try these programs, they are small uick and simple, ive used dvd decrypter for a long time its awesome
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i have two cd rom when i use nero for a copy of a cd in the part of target nero don’t see my device i have pentium 111 900 meg want can i do
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I have both Nero and roxio installed, I can’t tell if I have a harware problem or not.
The issue is with my internal drive on my laptop… I can burn dvd’s, just not any cd-r’s, I had been using Roxio for like forever but had started to have issues with skipping, so I installed Nero OEm that I had got with some hardware I bought and now I cannot burn cd-r’s at all, I can’t tell if the problem with my internal drive was just coincidentally dying out for CD-R’s????? so seeing I have an external DVD-rw burner I tried it and it will burn anything I want with both roxio and roxio installed so… if anyone has any ideas about my internal drive let me know. Can a DVD-RW drive write dvd’s but not cd-r’s??? or do I have a software problem???
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Roxio is a load of crap. It takes ages to burn a Dvd, no matter what i try it still takes hours to burn onto a disc.Nero is just the same.This software is rubbish or im just thick one of the two.Does anyone know if there is a fast burning software i can get my hands on.
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Every time I let Nero software anywhere near my PC I sincerely regret it. Just done it again – what an ass.
The F*****g software takes over everything. Every time I open windows media player Nero pops up asking for a serial number, I type it in. It says thanks. And it asks for it every time after that ……. well it can F*** Off.
I selected not to change my defaults during installation but it did anyway. If I want to get ignored like that I just speak to my wife.
This is defiantly the last time. If any more DVD , CD drives come with a Nero disk they will be used for airgun targets.
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Your Roxio and Nero drivers are conflicting with one anohter…you cannot have both at the same time…always happens with roxio…Roxio is the worst….Use the newest nero and you will be fine
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wow. Roxio and nero do work fine together.
when going to a newer version of either nero or roxio, you must remove all traces of the last version. Norton windoctor and or regclean4.3 can help with this.Nero also has a removal tool that works but you usually need to run it more than once.
Roxio 7 is excellent, 8 sucks, 9 is better.
The skipping mentioned here by one dude could be a seriously fragged hard drive, you need enough un-fragged free space to burn music cd’s nicely minimum 700mb. Also make sure you do tell nero/roxio where to put its cache or temp files and this should be the 700mb to 5Gb un-fragged free space. I partition my c drive so i have 1 empty partition for burning and making backups of C…..
Also, burning music at the speed its played is best practice….you can burn faster but then your machine should be immaculate.
if you are using xp, turn off the xp’s abilities to burn cd’s as it conflicts with Roxio.
I also have found that Roxio’s Drag to Disc can cause conflicts. Lockups, etc. so I turn it off.
Its faster nowadays to burn to a normal disk the normal way. The only good drag to disk was on easy media creator 5 and earlier, since then they suck.
The cd/dvd burners use different lasers and 1 can die before the other..so the dude with the laptop that can’t burn cd-r’s anymore, could be time for another burner.
The choice of burner is #1 importance as to how well everything will work. I love Plextor, yet I have a samsung writemaster that blows my Plextor 716A away. The plextor and my 2 Lite-ons have nothing but problems with RW media, yet the samsung seems to burn anything.
Next most important is the media. Not counting RW media as I hate them all, Verbatim and RCA and Sony are trouble free, 1 coaster after 100 burns..
Maxcell, Ridata and most of the no-names…suck
Maxcell tops the bad list in 100 coasters for 100 burns. They usually burn and test ok, but read them a week later and nothing but errors.
I have more to say, but thats enough for now
P.S. I burn 10 to 20 DVD’s a week I use Roxio 7 and 9 and Nero 6.6.1.4 and CDRWin 3.9e and Alcohol 120%
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From these posts, it seems like some people like Roxio and some like Nero. I only have Roxio, and there is no chance that I’m going to buy Nero now that I have the whole Roxio media center program thing. I have similar problems with Roxio as Vinny in the first post, but the computer I’m using is a BRAND NEW Gateway with a BRAND NEW DVD burner. What the hell? Roxio was the first program installed on it, and the machine runs everything else like a charm. I created a DVD to see how it worked, and it seemed to work fine until i clicked “burn”. The progress bar stayed at 0% for about an hour, so i clicked “cancel”, and then had to refer to the Ctrl+Alt+Del function because the program was “not responding”. The same thing happened all other 9 times i tried it. Is there any resonable explanation for why this happens, besides “Because Roxio Sucks.” Thanks.
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Oh yeah, and if there is not, Can DVD decrypter or DVD shrink burn DVD’s or is there another free program that can do it for me?
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Adam, I have experienced that before and the problem has been 1 of 3 things, either there is not enough free space on your drive that you chose as a cache, or there is a hard disk error, or the dvd/cd is faulty. Any of those 3 things can cause the nothing happening for an hour or more scenario.
A Note about the installation of nero, don’t allow nero to run the appropriate program at the end of the install, only allow it to put an icon on your desktop, and then it will not ‘take over’ your system.
Also in order to have both nero and roxio work, when installing roxio, I always deselect everything that I can because all I really want is the classic creator. Nero has all the tools I want and Roxio burns DVD’s without shortening the CD/DVD label. that is the only feature in Roxio I have a use for.
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I should also point out that when I install any cd/dvd burning programs that I don’t give them any control over my systems. They are there for me to use when and how I choose. When ever I insert a blank media, all I want to see is that the disk is detected by windows, not any burning or playback programs, I will decide which program I want to use after windows indicates that there is a new blank media inserted, and I also never select the program from the xp popup for said media as that will then allow that program to run next time I insert a blank media. I always select cancel and then select my program choice from my programs menu.
Another important note, unless I am using Verbatim or RCA media I always burn at the speed below the softwares shown top speed that it thinks it can use on this media.
I also use a 3rd party program to test my media when done, and preferably in a different burner or plain CD/DVD ROM. (presently using CD Check 2.0.2.272) In my opinion the test in the burn programs are a joke.
P.S. There are several things about Roxio and Nero that I hate, so I hope thats enough for me to write in here..heh
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Nero Trail worked perfect for me. I was burning VCD’s.. However Trail Version is over.
Can I delete and re-install it again?
or will it leave something in my to know i downloaded it before?.
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I also came across your site searching for nero and roxio alternatives. There has to be a decent lightweight program that can do the basic tasks fo burning cds.
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Die Roxio, die!!!
I am paranoid about losing my digital photos. When we travel, I take a lot of pictures. I take my laptop with me so that I can download my pictures at the end of the day. Having had a computer stolen in the train station in Brussels, I am also paranoid about losing the computer with all of my pictures on it. Therefore, I dutifully make a backup copy of my pictures. In the past, I have used a thumb drives, but that gets to be a bit cumbersome. Therefore in this trip, I decided to burn CDs using Roxio. BIG mistake. After the first day, when I tried to backup the pictures, Roxio went berserk. It deleted the photos – totally! I attempted to recover them using at least 6 different recovery packages. None of them could find traces of the files!
In addition, it appears that Roxio is the cause of the power save function no longer working on my laptop.
I hate Roxio! I hate Sonic!
I am now on a quest to find a good alternative.
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Nero should be completely disabled during install except maybe just the Data Burning software which is f’ed ^ on Vista.
Vista burns .ini file to disk in mastered mode f’ed ^ more DVD burns that wont play then I care to admit.
Roxio was my only hope, so now pissed about what I’m reading here.
Vista also reports bogus graphics card trying to burn DVD with yet another unusable half-app, but it’s not the apps fault it’s the lame legacy ‘Foundation’ [an F word also ripped off from Apple smart people], or sketched shells of an OS that are only full filled by complaints ([need I mention Direct X sound control as a perfect example – it has all commands but only play works so to stop you play the end, broken bare bones fillawfulsofee]. Only thing sketcher is my rant at the swiss cheese windowz makes all our lives.
Oh to add for DVDs I needed AC3 audio sources (via TMPGEnc and DVD-lab) to hear audio in NVDVD and Encore built a nice DVD too but only burning from encore (or disk image I suppose) was playable likely some ini file issue.
So after hating my DVD burning around Nero experience in/and with Vista I’ve turned to… what? Roxio? totally dissed here? I’ll have to check it next thanks.
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I have used Nero for years from the earliest to the latest version (7) and before XP it use to be a nightmare burning disks but since XP Nero has worked flawlessly. On one of my computers I’ve upgraded to Vista and Nero has a problem burning disk but hopefully that will be fixed but Vista Ultimate has a utility in it that you can copy data to a dvdrw without any other software – very useful. I’ve just bought Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 to try out on my Vista machine so hopefully it may go ok but we will see. I have 9 computers in the house and each one has its own cd/dvd burning software and 3 have Nero 7 and no problems on any of them including my laptops. Also other sofware works well on the other computers.
My desktop PCs have terrabytes of hard disk space as each has several hard drives on eide and sata so Nero seems to be fine. I use Amd processors and no problems buring CD’s.
Burning software does need space so try defragging drives and adding an extra drive if necessary to keep ones C drive clear as much as possible.
Incidently chaps its really helpful to read your comments but could we dispense with the F please word even if asterisked out. Ladies do read forums you know.
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I had a problem with Nero and corrected it with the tip from post 7 by searching for the Compatibility Wizard in Help, then setting Nero to run as 2000 standards. Thanks for the tip!
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Have you noticed that you only find out the bad stuff after you have installed it, I have installed Roxio, after it was recommended to me ( I will never talk to that person again), It never worked properly to start with. I am working with Windows XP and it has caused no end of problems, I dont know if you have noticed, but they don’t show the uninstall button. So I am having to use XPs add/ remove programs. And it is all going!! hopefully that will fix the problem. I even tried not to use Roxio to burn CDs, (just using the XP CD Burner. Roxio would hijack the CD and then would stop and not do anything, has anyone had this happen. Soooo Frustrating. But I will not be defeated. Roxio is going….. and good riddance
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I can't uninstall it via the control panel cos it tries to install itself over and over again. I've seen viruses that are less damaging than this program. The developers can't write a proper install/uninstall much less anything else. I tell you, those people are so stupid, they couldn't get piss out of a boot if you put the instructions on the heel!
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