Thinkpad T400/T500 Users: Experiences with Nero?

Hello all.
I just received my new Thinkpad T500 2 days ago and it was pretty awesome.
Although I am currently having troubles with Nero with my DVD burner that was shipped along with the laptop.
FYI, the laptop came with the "HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-U20N" DVD-RAM burner.
The problem with the drive is such that the entire system would freeze whenever Nero "waits for a disc". That being said, this happens when you have inserted a wrong type of disc into the drive and/or are verifying the written data after the data has been successfully written to the drive. After 3-5 minutes that the system froze, it will become responsive again with Nero saying "SCSI Command Aborted" and the drive disappearing from the system (and Device Manager.) The hard drive activity led will also stay constantly lit and the system will no longer shutdown/restart. The only way to shutdown/restart/re-enable the optical drive is to forcefully power-off the system (pressing the power button for 5 sec) and restarting the machine. The disc will, however, burn fine if I try to have Nero avoid having to eject the disc before hand (making sure the disc is the right type, erasing rewritables before hand, unchecking verify written data at the burn status page)

Steps to reproduce the problem:
METHOD 1:
1. Start Nero
2. Start with type DVD and click New
3. Drag any random file into the file browser and click Burn
4. Insert any ordinary CD-ROM into the drive
5. Start the Burn process
6. Nero should notify you that an incorrect type of disc has been inserted. The disc tray would then pop out.
7. System freeze for 3-5 mins.

METHOD 2:
1. Start Nero
2. Start with type CD.
3. Burn anything you would like to burn.
4. When the burn process is started, check the "Verify written data" checkbox.
5. Wait until burn process is complete.
6. When verification starts and disc tray is ejected, the system freezes and may show the error: "SCSI Command Aborted" in the log window.
** This method may only work on CDs (worked okay for DVDs for me)


If you have a T400/500, can you please give me the following information:
1. What model do you have: (T400/T500/etc)

2. What burning software did you use? (Sonic/Nero/Roxio/etc)

3. Did you do a clean install of the operating system while using the burning software that you are using? In other words, did you erase everything that came with the computer and installed everything on your own?

4. Are you using the "HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-U20N" drive? If not, what drive are you using?

5. What is the firmware version of the drive? (I have updated mine to HX11)

6. What version of Nero are you using?

7. Did the above methods freeze your computer? If so, which method(s)?

8. Did you also experience the other problems I have described in this thread? (not being able to shutdown after the freeze, hard drive activity led lit, etc)

9. If you experience the same problem(s), have you contacted Lenovo about this? What was their response? (Lenovo said they would not support third party software?)

10. Did Nero eject your disc during the burn process? Were you able to burn a disc successfully if you took precautions to have Nero not eject the tray for your disc? What type of disc/media was used?

11. Any other comments?

Thanks so much in advance.

 

Why not try the ThinkPad burner software? If it works, the problem's Nero. If not perhaps there's something wrong with the drive. I personally disliked Nero after version 6. The new versions are farty and bloated. I use CDBurnerXP. It's a lightweight burner software and works well for the basics, which all I do.

 

1. What model do you have: (T400/T500/etc)
T400
2. What burning software did you use? (Sonic/Nero/Roxio/etc)
Nero
3. Did you do a clean install of the operating system while using the burning software that you are using? In other words, did you erase everything that came with the computer and installed everything on your own?
Clean install Windows XP only
4. Are you using the "HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-U20N" drive? If not, what drive are you using?
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-U20N
5. What is the firmware version of the drive? (I have updated mine to HX11)
HX11
6. What version of Nero are you using?
6.6.0.16
7. Did the above methods freeze your computer? If so, which method(s)?
no
8. Did you also experience the other problems I have described in this thread? (not being able to shutdown after the freeze, hard drive activity led lit, etc)
no
9. If you experience the same problem(s), have you contacted Lenovo about this? What was their response? (Lenovo said they would not support third party software?)
n/a
10. Did Nero eject your disc during the burn process? Were you able to burn a disc successfully if you took precautions to have Nero not eject the tray for your disc? What type of disc/media was used?
worked normally,dvd

 

Hello tripper:
Thanks so much for your response. I see that you are using an old version of Nero. Therefore, can you let me know if Nero ejected the CD/DVD when you performed the test? If so, have you installed any special driver(s) for your optical drive? (such as special SATA drivers, etc). If yes, where did you install it from?
Thanks again.

 

get Imgburn

 

Nero 6 is the best version. After that it became very bloated and buggy. Yes, It ejects the disk. No, I did not install any other drivers.

 

I have the same problem with my T400. Same DVD drive. I just uninstalled nero and installed roxio that came with the computer.

 

Thanks so much for the confirmation. Can you let me know if you did a clean install and what version of Nero you are using? Also, did you install any kind of special drivers?

 

Yea a clean install. Nero 8. Didn't install special drivers.

 

I wonder if this is only a Nero problem or if its a problem with the drive. At least now I know I did not have a hardware defect in the drive. (Or maybe they are all defective? xD)

 

Can anyone else confirm if they have this problem? Thanks!

 

Did you ever get this problem resolved?

 

Wow, old thread. Anyway, I used to like nero and found the latest installation was about a 400MB download. I started to install and decided there must be a better way than installing all that bloat just to image and burn discs. So about a month ago I also found the free IMGBURN software and what a great utility and only a 2MB install file.

IMGBURN site: http://www.imgburn.com/

Might be worth testing the issue with this to see if you have a hardware or software issue.

 

I have to agree on this as well.

I loved Nero back when it was a small, powerful, albeit exceedingly complex application known as Nero Burning-ROM (circa 5.0). However, successive versions added extra features, made it very difficult to access the classic interface, and just became plain unpleasant. In addition, the version of Nero I own refuses to even install on Vista/7 so I completely abandoned the product.

ImgBurn and InfraRecorder are both small, free, and effective buring applications.

 

I just installed Nero 6.6.1.15 on my T400 running Windows 7 RC (64-bit). I was warned about incompatibilities; I ignored that and told the OS to do what I wanted it to do. Same for NeroVision Express .

Just burned a nearly 4GB data DVD without issues. Drive ejected properly afterwards. I can't say I've done enough testing yet, but it appears to work so far.

Like the others, I too believe that every version of Nero after 6.6.1.15 is bloated crapware. If 6.6 is no longer compatible, I'll use CDBurnerXP for regular burns, and DVDFlick if I need to author DVDs.