This is a problem that i have for a long time now and i really don't know what is causing it

First of all the problem occurs during burning a DVD. Using NERO, when a process is about 45% and more the DEVICE BUFFER drops, resulting the stop of the process. Then it begins again and the DEVICE BUFFER drops again. This is repeated. NOTE THAT the DEVICE BUFFER ONLY drops and not the MEMORY BUFFER.

Now at the beginning i though i had a faulty Writter but then i tried the device of a friend and did the same problem while on his PC was fine.

The device i used was LITEON 832S (i dont actually remember).

As the problem continued i though it may be the software i tried different versions of NERO but the problem is still there. The funny thing is that when i burn images with ALCOHOL 120% is fine.

The story continues... While this was happening i was suspicious about every single component of my PC. Since then (and because of other reasons) i changed a power supply, a new ASUS motherboard, and just yesterday i bought a new WD SATA RE harddisk and a new NEC 3520A. AND YES!!!!!! the problem still occurs and this time not only in NERO but also with DVD-Decrypter which i am sure it worked fine before!!!

The only components not changed on my PC are actually my memory (Samsung 512MB) and my AMD XP2000 processor.

I really don't know what is wrong and this is very weird.

If you have any idea plz help. Thank you for reading my rather long post.

this is perfectly normal for the device buffer to empty then refill, it happens when the AOPC kicks in. its just the lazer recalibrting its self to maximize the quality of the burn.

Thank you for your reply.

I though that when the buffer of the writter empties, it means that it will stop writting and has to resume, which is not healthy for a DVD. Is it not?

Thank you

if the used read buffer emptys while burning this is because the data flow can`t keep up which can lead to the device buffer emptying this is called a buffer underrun, but modern burners have buffer underrun protection anyway.

a while ago i had 2 trogen viruses on my pc and i kept getting buffer underruns but my burns came out ok.

Yes but in order to have buffer underrun the memory buffer should also be empty. But it is not. Only the device buffer empties. (????)

I checked my pc and came out clean of viruses and trojans (at least i hope so!)

Thank you.

yes this correct, and also when the AOPC kicks in the burner light flickers off/on which pauesers the burn for a second.

if you what to see the AOPC working start nero cd speed, select your 3520 insert a blank disc and run create data disc this will burn a full disc with data and produce a graph showing you when the device buffer emptys and then restarts.

Thank you for the reply. I am going to try it now. So even if the AOPC kicks in to do the calibration is this healthy for the DVD disc in matter of errors? (I dont know if i am correct, i am talking about the errors detected by KProbe program).

Look at the burn charts at the NEC forum. You will see dips in the write speed. This is perfectly normal. These dips often occur when the buffer goes to zero. NEC drives dynamically calculate the optimum burn parameters on the fly. These dips will increase the write time by a few seconds, but should improve the overall quality of the burn.

Thank you both for your replies. You covered my issue completely.

no probs