Hi folks, I've got me a very strange problem; I've bought a set of 3 DVD on EBay with technical drawings as TIF and PDF files. As you can imagine thats quite a lot of files. Now the strange thing is that some of the files won't open. Hovering with the cursor over such a file will block everything. Light on both DVD reader/burner (NEC ND-3540A) and PC are both burning and the program - MS Picture Manager, the default Windows viewer or Adobe reader - does no longer respond. Touching the eject button on the player frees everything again.
Tried the DVD's on a PC at work; complete PC froze solid. Another PC at work could read a number of files, but also froze after a number of pages in a PDF file. This all happened under XP. Yesterday my son's new PC was delivered, with Vista and also this PC froze even without reading a single file.
The guy from which I bought the DVD's has already sended me a new set, but that seems to have the same faults.
Could it be an issue of burning with an English XP version and reading with a Dutch version?

Any advise is more than welcome

Welcome to the forum

Are these burned or pressed discs?

If they're burned, it could be that you've been unlucky enough to get two sets of badly burned or bad quality discs.

Reading a disc burned on an English copy of XP on a PC with the Dutch version should make no difference.

Thanks Arachne, I'll think they're burned ones

OK, in that case, can you try this:

Download and run CD-DVD Speed (or DiscSpeed as it now seems to be called - it's free), and put one of the problem discs in your drive.

Go to the "Disc Info" tab, and see what it says under Manufacturer and MID.

Then post that info there for us, it'll tell us who made the discs, and therefore whether they're good quality or not.

Hi Arachne, cool program Discspeed. I tried to do some tests on one of the discs; not one could be completed! However I've manged to get the info you've asked for:
Nero DiscSpeed: Disc Info
Basic Information
Disc type: : DVD-R
Book Type : DVD-R
Manufacturer: : unknown
MID : ProdiscF02
Write speeds: : 2 X - 4 X - 6 X - 8 X - 12 X - 16 X
Blank Capacity : 4.38 GB
: 4489 MB
: 4707319808 bytes
Extended Information
Layers : 1
Usage : General
Copyright protection : n/a
Recorder information : recorded with PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-107D
Disc Status : Closed
Raw Data
Pre-recorded Information in Lead-in (0Eh)
0000 - 01 40 C1 FD 9E D8 52 00 02 87 0D 13 87 88 90 00 - .@....R.........
0010 - 03 50 72 6F 64 69 73 00 04 63 46 30 32 00 00 00 - .Prodis..cF02...
0020 - 05 88 80 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 - ................
0030 - 00 00 00 00 C4 02 11 00 39 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 - ........9.......
0040 - FF FF FF FF 9A F2 4D 00 02 00 00 00 4C 00 11 00 - ......M.....L...
0050 - 00 00 01 00 EC 01 11 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 - ................
0060 - 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 02 00 00 00 - ................

I can add that after I've stopped the tests and made a second attempt there was no recording date and label visible, hope this helps.

Thanks for the info

While Prodisc F02 can be good with some burners, other burners may not burn them so well, especially if the person that sold you the discs burned them at the maximum 16x (highly likely).

There's a very good chance, it's the media. Added to that, NECs aren't the greatest readers if a disc is badly burned.

I'll ask this anyway, but your drive (and your son's) reads other burned DVD media OK?

Edit: Try ISOBuster, or ISO Puzzle, with the help of those programs, you may be able to recover all the files, if you don't want to send the discs back yet again.

Hi Arachne, your great man. I've never had any problem with my reader although its a veteran already. And my sons reader has done everything perfect sofar, but its only 3 days in thehouse.
I'll go and try Isobuster and will let you know what happened. Thanks sofar.

Hi Arachne, tried all the things you've said, but none of the programs could finish its job; IsoBuster recovered 1 PDF file, IsoPuzzle got to 77% of an image and then frooze, CDRoller couldn't save any recovered data - how they think to sell a program this way I don't understand - , so I think this is closed.
Or do you have any other suggestions. I'll go and send the seller an e-mail asking if he could make another set on a different brand DVD with the lowest possible speed. Hope that solves the problem
Thanks for your advice