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.

There’s a bug in Windows that causes this to happen at times. There are a few reasons why this can happen, but here are the most common three:

• You upgrade a computer to Windows Vista or install Windows Vista Service Pack 1.
• You install or uninstall CD or DVD recording programs.
• You uninstall Microsoft Digital Image.

There’s an Knowledge Base article on Microsoft’s website that has a program that an fix the problem for you. Just head down to the article and see if it will do the trick. There’s a fix for Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7, which means the problem can occur in any of those operating systems.

It’s fairly easy to fix so head down to the website, click on Fix this problem, light up one of your Dutch Master and let your computer do the work.

To tell you the truth, I’m more of a PC man than an Apple user; I’ve only used a Macbook for a week and still haven’t figured out how to right-click on something (yeah I know, shift-click; that was a joke). Anyway,looking around I came across a package called Roxio Toast which looks like it may be able to do what you want.

Roxio Toast 10 is a package that has been available for the Mac for some time now and claime to have been the disc recording standard for the Mac for over 10 years. Here are some things it can do:

Toast 10 Titanium simplifies disc burning, DVD copying and video conversion. Edit, copy, burn and share your videos, movies, photos, music and more. New features include AVCHD support, internet audio capture, audiobook CD conversion, a video clip extractor, and a streaming Web video capture feature. Improved features let you watch recorded TiVo shows on your Internet connected PC or iPhone anywhere. Toast standbys include digitizing LP and tapes and copying dual layer DVDs onto affordable single layer discs.

You can get the package on sale from Buy.com for just under $60 (after rebate). Keep in mind that these sort of packages shouldn’t be used to copy copyrighted material; but if it’s just to copy family videos then that’s fine.

I got this question from someone who received a product catalogue from a supplier who specialises in boots made by UGG Australia. The catalogue was downloaded off their website and consisted of one great big .ISO file. Windows doesn’t actually read this type of file natively but there are a couple of options you can look into to handle this file. First of all, let’s have a look at what a .ISO file is. It’s actually an image of a complete DVD or CD that lets you create a perfect mirror of what the original disk looked like. It’s a great way to package disks up in a way that allows someone else to produce a perfect copy. So, what can we do with a .ISO file?

• Burn it to physical media: One option is to create a CD or DVD and access the data from the disk. Most disk writing packages today let you do this without too much hassle. Personally, I like using Nero for this but there are other pacakges out there that will let you do this too.
• Access the file directly: If you don’t need to have a physical copy of the disk, you may also access the disk directly. This is a process called “mounting” the disk that makes your operating system think you have an extra drive. One free tool that lets you do this is Virtual CloneDrive. Once this is installed you can right-click on the ISO file and mount it as an extra CD/DVD drive. You can then copy files directly off it without having to actually burn a disk.

Virtual CloneDrive is actually one of my favourite Desktop Management Tools because it lets me access data directly even it I’m remotely attached to a machine. I no longer need to burn a disk but can access data and programs directly off it. This has been particularly useful now that software manufacturers (particularly Microsoft) supply their media as .ISO files

Vista comes in a number of different “Editions” some of which have the ability to play DVDs and some which don’t. Vista Home Premium and Ultimate can play DVDs without any extra software, but Vista Basic cannot. To play DVDs you’ll need to get a decoding program which can do this for you. Here are some options:

• Roxio DVD Decoder: will set you back £10
• Cyberlink PowerDVD Decoder: costs around $15
• Upgrade Vista to a more comprehensive version.

That’s all I can find out at the moment. Anyone have any free DVD decoders that will work in this scenario?