Thinkpads Forum

I seem to have lost the ability to write CDs in my T60. I installed Internet Explorer 8 since the last time I tried to write a CD, and I've heard talk of compatibility problems with Sonic DLA (preinstalled on my machine), so that might be the problem.

The symptom: I insert a new, blank CD in the drive, a dialog box pops up telling me that DLA must format the CD, I say OK, it formats the CD, and just as it finishes, the machine crashes with a blue screen saying something about BAD POOL. When the machine comes back up, a window pops up from Microsoft saying, in effect, that they looked at the crash dump and don't know what the problem is, but it's probably related to antivirus stoftware.

I tried disabling DLA in startup, by running msiconfig and disabling DLACTRLW in the startup tab, and the result is that I cannot access the drive at all.

So... my question is this: If I simply uninstall DLA entirely, will that enable the native Microsoft drive-writing facilities? If not, do you have any suggestions?

DLA stands for Drive Letter Access. This is for packet writing - using your CD similar to a floppy disk. My experience with packet writing leaves something to be desired (unfortunately). Packet writing is buggy and it is easy to lose your work. I recommend uninstalling DLA using Add or Remove Programs (XP) or Programs and Features (Vista). You can use other burning software such as Sonic RecordNow! (if it is installed), Roxio, or Nero to create multisession disks. With a multisession disk, you can add files as often as you like until the disk is full. There are even some free CD burning programs available for download (I think).

GomJabbar wrote:DLA stands for Drive Letter Access. This is for packet writing - using your CD similar to a floppy disk. My experience with packet writing leaves something to be desired (unfortunately). Packet writing is buggy and it is easy to lose your work. I recommend uninstalling DLA using Add or Remove Programs (XP) or Programs and Features (Vista). You can use other burning software such as Sonic RecordNow! (if it is installed), Roxio, or Nero to create multisession disks. With a multisession disk, you can add files as often as you like until the disk is full. There are even some free CD burning programs available for download (I think).

The question is: If I remove DLA, will I then be unable to write anything at all until I find some other CD recording software and install it, or is there some Windows native facility that DLA hides when installed?

I assume you are using XP (Pro). My experience with Sonic DLA under XP has taught me that this piece of software is buggy, so in general there is no guarantee that something won´t went wrong if you uninstall DLA. Now, based on what you mention about disabling DLA from windows startup, I think the problem you have observed has a "simple" explanation: From what I have seen, DLA completely overtakes the burning support in XP, and with DLA installed there is hence no way to use the native XP burning function. DLA is registered as the burning program and substitutes the native one. Disabling it from startup just does that - doesn´t allow it to initialize (and hence no burning access to the drive), but it doesn´t recover the native XP burning feature, it doesn´t "unregister" Sonic DLA from its function. That´s why I think this observation of yours shouldn´t be a concern for you for uninstalling Sonic DLA. It´s more likely that something goes wrong due to some bug than due to this. I would say go ahead and uninstall it, but also bear in mind that XP built-in burning support is not that great at all!... Better get some of the free burning programs that are known to work rock-solid.

Cheers,

Marin

EDIT: sorry, I have misused the term "burning support". In any case you won´t lose XP burning support needed for third party burning applications. Under "burning support" I meant what you were referring to in your previous posts -> built-in CD burning functionality.

I found the following list of free burning software for Windows. I am not really familiar with any of them. The site appears to be safe as it takes you to the source site of each software package. You may be able to find burning software on http://download.cnet.com/windows/ as well.

http://www.techmixer.com/free-windows-c ... -download/

Also check out this link for various CD/DVD burning freeware (link stolen from forum member beGi ).

I unstalled DLA. So far, the Windows native CD burning stuff seems to work just fine for me.

That´s some good news. Glad that it worked for you.

Cheers,

Marin

I use CDBurnerXP in place of the ThinkPad's Sonic Software, which is kind of bloated if you ask me. It works well in Vista too.