Why does my CD burner hate me?

[Eva_Luna]

Whenever I’ve tried to burn CDs on my still-under-warranty machine, I get the following error:

“The attempt to burn a disc failed. An unknown error occurred (4280).”

I’m running Windows XP Home Edition, and I’ve tried several different pieces of software: Windows Media PLayer, MusicMatch, iTunes, and Cakewalk Pyro, off the top of my head. They all give me the same problem.

Seriously, I’ve been through something like 5 extensive conversations with HP tech support, a replaced CD-RW drive, and one Fedex roundtrip back to HP for bench repairs (they replaced an IDE cable and sent it back to me - the first CD burned fine, but then I kept getting the same error as before). Finally, last night a tech told me to try burning CDs using the preinstalled RecordNow! software, and it worked. He tells me sometimes CD burners don’t like a particular brand of blank CD, or they don’t like a particular brand in conjunction with a particular software program.

I haven’t gotten to go buy new CDs yet to test his theory (and I wish I’d heard this before I wasted something like 20 blank CDs running tests, but this makes no sense. What’s the reason for this? Aren’t blank media supposed to be interchangeable? And what’s the freaking point if they’re really not? Any pther suggestions/ideas?

[kinoons]

My DVDRW/CDRW likes to burn to sony media, cant stand memorex media, so yes it can be media dependant.

other than that, try running MSconfig (start, run, msconfig) and disable everything possible on startup (under the startup tab) and see if you can burn that way. If you can, go back in, start adding checkmarks, and see when the problem comes back. That might give you a good clue to your software conflict.

[Scott_Plaid]

Goog’eled!
from someone’s blog

@Damon

Not sure if you have a Sony burner or not E, but Apple has an article in their iTunes knowledge base that addresses your exact error. Hope it helps you out.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300403

@Cale Corbett

Do you have the MSN Desktop Search thing installed? I got that exact same error burning in iTunes after I installed it. I uninstalled it and the problem went away.

@ll1954

Hi guys,
The third try works for a cd. Insert new cd, get error, cd ejects. Re-insert cd, get error, cd rejects. Re-insert cd, this time it burns great.
It’s weird, because if you do it once, get the error, remove the cd, put another cd in and then put the original cd back in, it knows it’s rejected it once already and only rejects it one more time, so it must be doing something. It’s a cumbersome work around, but it does work consistently.