burning DVD w/ intervideo -> 2623 D6U freezes

[guYom]

I am under BIOS 1.09, with an Hitachi DVD/CD RW.

I have burned one DVD using Intervideo (DVD Creator) successfully.

I tried burning a second DVD, following same steps as in my first successful attempt, and it systematically fails -- I have tried about 6 times.

The 2623 DU6 with 1.5 G simply hangs after a few minutes into the process, I have to remove the battery each time in order to restart. I ran Doc on the DVD drive and no errors are being reported.

The DVD player seems to be working fine to watch movies. Although I have not used it much, about a month or two ago while watching a 2 hour movie, the TP froze in a similar fashion about an hour into the movie, I had to remove the battery.

Here when burning DVDs it is very early in the process -- a few minutes as it starts 'reading' what I am trying to burn -- the movie I am burning starts playing in a small window of DVD Creator, and soon enough the movie stops playing and it just hangs there.

Any ideas what could be causing this and what to do?

Thanks.

[GomJabbar]

I don't know the answer to your DVD problem. But as far as removing the battery, that shouldn't be necessary. If you hold down the power button (Power On/Off) for a few seconds (up to 10), that should force the ThinkPad to shutdown.

[guYom]

Thanks, I didn't know that. I tried shutting by pressing the on/off, but I wasn't holding it down for long.

I have tried again burning a DVD, same thing. This time I sut down all other applications, and even turned off the wireless card just in case. Same story, a few minutes into the process, the TP freezes.

Any ideas what's causing this freeze? The only mod I have down to the original set up is to add 1 G of Transcend memory. If it is related, I don't understand why it is only happening when burning DVDs.

[guYom]

I updated intervideo via ThinkVantage, it still freezes

I tried using Windows Movie Maker, same thing it freezes as well.

I am at a loss and don't know what to try next...

[GomJabbar]

Try removing the 1GB of RAM for a test. It may make a difference.

[ThinkSlim]

Just a thought : Are you trying to burn using dvd from a particular manufacturer ? If Yes, the I recommend you try another and see if problem persists or goes away.
Also as recommended try burning with out the additional ram you added.
You can also call Support to see if they have any firmware update for the drive .
It also helps if the bios level is current.
If all else fails call Support to have them replace it.

[guYom]

Thanks.

I am using a Philips DVD - R 4.7 GB 120 min 1-16 X

I am leaving the default setting in Intervideo winDVDcreator.

I did call Customer Support, actually before I posted here. I spent 45 minutes on the phone, most of it the tech rep was trying to find my particular model in his database, not sure why it took him so long... in the end he told me to make sure I have the latest driver and BIOS , and to run DOC on the DVD drive, which I did, no errors were reported.

I'll try removing the 1 G of ram I added to see if that makes any difference.

[claudeo]

Some possibilities:
* Is it possible that the first DVD you burned contained much less video and/or data than the one you are using now? Video compression prior to burning may take a very long time, during which the computer may appear to hang.
* What you are seeing as a hang might just be the software preparing for the burn. Some software uses so much CPU capacity that the system appears to hang while it is busy -- e.g. Start menu does not respond, etc. This might be the case with this software.
* I don't know about InterVideo, but Adobe Premiere needs about 3 times the size of the video files as free space on the hard disk to successfully compress and burn a project. You might simply not have the workspace available on your drive. I use an external fast USB drive for video files; it may be a bit slower, but it is still a lot faster than dealing with repeated failures.
* Try to clear out any temporary files before burning. If you're not sure how to do that, at least do a disk cleanup (in Windows Explorer right-click the C: drive, choose Properties, then Disk Cleanup).
* There is definitely a problem with memory management in Windows XP. With 1.5GB of RAM I see some applications "die" silently depending on how much is going on and what appears to be some memory leaks when some combinations of applications are in used.