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[damndante]

Proud MC17 owner/user, showing wife how to make a play list and how she can burn it over multiple cds.
Of course when I go to burn, it spins up the
"error writing pre-gap"
It occured to me this is the 1st time i've tried to burn a cd with MC.

I tried on 2 different cd/dvd-rw's (one sata other ide).
Both of those drive burn just fine from foobar2k, they both read just fine from EAC.
Its a Windows 7x64 machine, I use Avast Free edition antivirus (cause no problems with other software).

I'm 5 coasters into this and decided to stop trying and see if anyone can point me in the right direction (before I run out of blank cd-r's).

Help...

[JohnT]

Please send a log file to johnt at jriver dot com ("Help / Logging / Output to a log file").
This was the first disc in a a multi-disc audio burn?

[damndante]

Yes, it was the 1st disc.  Playlist had 5 hours 18 minutes.
Was pleased to see when I went to burn that it figured out I needed to do multipe discs.

I will collect a log file this evening and send it (or should I post it here?)

I did try selecting 69 minutes of tracks from the playlist and send to burner, it failed writing pregap (and displayed no "multiple disc" message).
I rebooted the machine once as well to make sure I was reproducible.

[JohnT]

Our burning engine seems to be having problems with some newer drives for doing audio burns.  We're looking into it and a log file would still be helpful.  Thanks.

[damndante]

I have emailed the log to johnt at jriver dot com
please let me know if you received it.

[JohnT]

Got it, thanks. 

[JohnT]

I just ordered some new discs and will do more testing on Monday when they show up.  I was experiencing some failures, but all burning programs were failing intermittently on multiple drives, not just MC, so I'm suspecting bad media - it's a large stack of blank discs that have been sitting around the office for many years.  I'll update here when I know more.

If you have the time and inclination, you could run a test to provide another data point:
1. disable anti-virus software
2. power cycle your system
3. insert fresh blank disc and try burning in MC
4. if it fails, power cycle your system again
5. insert a new blank disc and try burning with a different program
6. does it work?

I just want to eliminate the possibility of the burner getting into a weird state for whatever reason.
Thanks!

[damndante]

I am positive its media center, not the drive or the media.
In the same session, I was able to export the playlist to .mpu then open it in Foobar 2000 and burn out 5 cds (albiet annoying I had to select  < 80 minutes of songs at a time and burn them).  It burned just fine on the same drive and media that Media Center had the "pre-gap" error.  Is there any additional debugging I could provide, this feels like a high priority issue.  Perhaps I'm the only person in the world with an older car with just a CD-player and no "aux" input. 

Can some other users test cd-burning in the latest Media Center?  I have a hard time believing its just me.

[hoffahoo]

Hi,

I got the same problem described above with MC20, Win7 PR0 64-bit and Avast Free. I have tried to disable Avast with rebooting and changing the browser engine to chromium instead of explorer. None of these has worked. I got the MC20 also on my old laptop with Win7 Home 32-bit and Avast Free, it has the same problem.

There was no problems burning audio-cds with MC19 on the old laptop. It seems to be a new problem that has come with the MC20.

Does anyone have a solution for this problem? I think I will try installing MC19 again on the old laptop and check if there is the same problem then...

[JimH]

If you think you do have a problem with antivirus, uninstall it to test.  Disabling it may not be enough.

[hoffahoo]

I uninstalled Avast, rebooted, started MC20, shut it, and rebooted again before trying to burn, but the same problem occurs. I noticed that there is 20.00.50 the latest recommended version and I have older, 20.00.47.

Got still some CDs left, so I will try to install the latest version first without any antivirus, though it doesn't seem to be a problem with that.

[hoffahoo]

OK, my second last CD-R and it started to work. Might be a problem with MC 20.00.47 or something with installing MC while having Avast running... Any how, without Avast installed on Win7 when installing MC 20.00.50, the burning works just fine.

Should I check if the problem really is Avast while installing MC? It could be easily done with that old laptop while upgrading to version 20.00.50.

[hoffahoo]

I think MC installed while Avast running on Win 7 causes these problems. I tested it with the old laptop and there is the "error writing pre gap" again. Seems that there is some kind of problem with the installation and Avast. No problems with burning when installing MC without Avast running.

Hope someone has some help from this.

[JimH]

You could report the problem to Avast.

[hoffahoo]

I accidentally solved this problem. Just thought to give it try once more burning audio-cd with JRiver and instead of opening the drive, I accidentally removed it from my laptop. After this Win7 required a boot to install the drive again. This procedure fixed the whole problem that was probably in the register some how. Caused by Avast during the installation of JRiver.

Anyone having this problem should try removing the drive and re-installing it again to Windows. With home-PC shut down just unplugging the drive, starting Windows, shutting Windows down and installing the drive again should do the job.

At least with Win7 64-bit Pro the case went like this.