Problem burning stuff with Hero 8 Essentials

[RoryObasan]

The Nero 8 Essentials that was bundled with my computer is acting up. I was trying to burn some CDs but some tracks either get cut or there is no sound coming out even if the files I'm burning are okay when I played them on Windows Media Player. Today, I tried burning again. This time, it stopped at "Prepare Audio writing". The program didn't hang because the timer kept on ticking. But the progress bar would not move beyond 14%. I'm afraid buying Nero 11 is beyond my financial means right now.

Any suggestions on what I should do?

[eliddell]

First thing to do would be to fix the typo in the subject line, to improve your chances of getting help.

For the rest, there are three things that could be causing problems here: Nero, your CD burner (or its drivers), or the music files.

So, have you done any driver updates recently? If so, try to revert them.

Can you still burn data discs without any problems? (If you can, your burner is at least physically okay.)

What happens if you try to use a different program to burn your disc, like one of the programs on Wikipedia's list of freeware disc authoring software? (I've used one of the previous versions of DeepBurner for data discs, and it worked well enough.)

Is it the same files that cause problems every time? If so, what happens if you use something like Audacity to turn them into .wav files before trying to burn them?

[daniyagami]

I had issues with the latest versions of Nero, I reverted to an old version (8 or 7, I don't remember) and also tried to burn the DVDs in a slower speed and had no more problems.

[KarumA]

Try another burning program, if it still happens then it is most likely your dvd/cd burner is broken.
They aren't expensive and easy to install

[lemur7]

Hi-There! .... I would do as KarumA has suggested ...try a different burning program ...on my last lappy it also had Nero essentials with it .... I very quickly removed it ...was just to un-reliable and is very much affected by any thing you install on your machine(I encode anime so I had many different programs that fought with it all the time)...personally I do not like any Nero version ... try "deepburn" or some of the other great freeware burning programs out on the net .....

[RoryObasan]

Thank you very much for all your advice! I've tried burning an audio CD on Windows Media Player and the cd/dvd burner is working just fine, so it's definitely Nero where the problem lies. I'll probably try Deepburner.

@eliddell The typo in the subject is due to my working for the past three days straight starting at 1 am. My vision must have deteriorated somewhat because I was typing long articles. Right now, "Hero" still looks like "Nero" to me.