Hello!

I've spent some time searching the Alcohol sub forum for the answer as to why the image burning process got hung up and subsequently my DVD/CD drive couldn't find inserted CDs (though it could read and write DVD) but without any good luck. I am not sure if this post actually belongs here, but since the problem occurred while trying to burn an image with Alcohol, so I guess this is the place, where I should post, if not, it will be moved to the right spot

Firstly, about my hardware and software:
AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2800+ (2.08GHz)
512MB of RAM
Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT
SAMSUNG SP0802N hard disk
NEC DVD/RW ND-3540A DVD/CD-ROM Drive, firmware version: 1.01
Gigabyte nVidia-nForce2 motherboard
BIOS Award F6
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (version 2002)

Ok, I'll describe the situation, how it happened, in detail.

About a week ago I wanted to burn a 720MB size iso file into a CD-R as an image with Nero 6.6.0.0 version and keep as a backup. I used an ACME CD-R 80min/700MB size with a maximum speed of 52x. But Nero threw out a message "The entered block size does not correspond to the image length. The block size may be wrong. Do you want to correct the value or ignore the problem?" and gives 2 choices "Ignore" and "Correct". I've had such messages a couple of times before, at those times I used Alcohol 120 1.4.8. version and easily, without any problems, burned the images. So I did the same in this instance. And here's the best part. In the processes' window The program shows that it is recording, I can hear the droning sound that emanates from the DVD/CD drive, which means that the CD is spinning, I can see the LED shining with a green light, BUT nothing is actually happening. I mean the burning process never starts: the progress bar is completely still, the burned amount of data is zero, though the program shows that the data is being recorded, something went wrong . So I waited like this about 17 minutes, but nothing changed. So I pressed cancel, but the program didn't stop the frozen burning. Oh I got frustrated, I turned off Alcohol 120, but the frozen process was still active, The DVD/CD drive was still droning, then I turned on the Alcohol again and, if I remember correctly, only at that time all of this stopped, though the Drive's tray wouldn't slide out. So I restarted the computer, saw that the tray works properly and inserted a CD, but NEC 3540A couldn't find the inserted CD, though it could easily read and write DVD. When I insert a CD the same thing happens as other people describe in the NEC CD/DVD sub forum However, for me it is still not completely clear what exactly the cause of this was. I think it could have happened for the following reasons:
a) a hardware failure
b) the burning program (that is Alcohol 120 1.4.8.v) error
c) a bad, corrupted media
d) the iso file was corrupted (though it is less likely as I have never heard of a CD/DVD drive breaking down due to a corrupted file)

I bought the DVD/CD drive at the beginning of August, I have burned approx. 10 CDs with it

Any help in this situation would be appreciated, if someone knows the reason of Alcohol freezing up when trying to start the burning process, please, share your knowledge

P.S. I know that it may seem strange why I haven't upgraded Alcohol to version 1.95.xx, but I was simply lazy to upgrade . As I have used Alcohol only for those few times to burn images when that was impossible with Nero, I don't care if the program is old, whether there are new versions or not, as long as Alcohol 120 works properly, so I didn't bother to upgrade.

Regards