Ask Owen

My DVD drive tends to be a bit hit and miss. Most of the time, the burned DVD are fine, but sometimes they just don’t work. Are there any suggestions you can give me to make sure the DVD burns correctly?

There are a number of factors that can cause a DVD to be burnt incorrectly. Here are some things to try:

• Try to reduce the burning speed of your DVD. Reducing the speed can make the writing more reliable. In order to do this, right-click on the drive in Explorer and choose Properties and the Recording tab. Click the dropdown box under “Select  recording speed..’ and select 1X. Burning will be slower and more reliable.
• The other thing to try is to close all other programs and leave your disk burning software as the only thing running. Other programs can use CPU and I/O cycles and can affect the writing of the disk.
• Don’t mess with your computer. If you have a laptop computer then physical shocks can affect the writing of your disk. Keep it stable and see if it helps.

There are a number of things that an cause problems, but usually a bit of common sense can help resolve the issue.

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