Problems with Burned Operating System Disks

2048Megabytes

2048Megabytes

Active Member
I have two burned copies of Windows 7 Beta and a burned copy of Windows XP. All the installation disks seemed to work fine until recently. I tried to do an installation with each of the three disks and would get hangs. After watching the system hang while doing the installation for about 20 to 30 minutes on each I gave up. I have tried installations on two different hard drives and two different DVD readers. The installations seem to hang at the exact same spots so I am guessing the disks are damaged. The disks have very minute scratches on them on except the Windows XP is in nearly perfect condition.

Anyone else have issues like this? Are burned operating system disks are only good for so long?

My Linux Ubuntu 9.04 installation disk still seems to work fine.
 
My guess is that you have a hardware issue, try installing one of the os's on a different machine and see if it takes, just don't activate it.
 
Id imagine it is just the disks, the quality of the cdr will determine how long it will last, whats burned on them is irrelevant.
I have had a problem with a burned os disc like that, i tried to install the os using the disc, not my disc, but it refused to format the hd and the setup screen was very slow i came to the conclusion it was a bad HD, but then i used my disc and it worked fine.
I'd say you're just gonna need a new copy.

On a slightly related note i had a problem with some OS discs i was using but i had a couple of versions of the os on diff discs with me, so when it said cannot copy file xxx.xxx i put in the other disc, the changed it back after it copied the file and then got an error saying cannot find xxx.xxx overall used three discs for an os install that only requires one disc.
 
I think your both right. One note though.
Color of dye can be a problem with with cd/dvd roms. Related to the quality of the rom drives laser heads. Ive always burned with the colors that i think will work mostly for all. Get a can of compressed air from office supply. Open cover on rom drive and lightly blow off the inside across laser head. do not turn on hard (soft spray), not side ways or upside down or ya might get an oil base on the lens.

The color dye was on bottom of the cd or dvd was brought up because i copy vhs, negitives and old slides for people. they could not read. Burned on another color and gave to them and worked fine. Blowing out the rom drive is not uncommon on occasion and always worked also.
Just an idea.
 
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You can check the readability of disks with utilities like (Nero) DiscSpeed, ScanDisc tab. Data disks have error handling built into the burn so soft errors caused by loss of a few bits can be resolved.
 
I think it is a hardware issue also Johnb35. I should try these burned installation disks out on a different system. Maybe my motherboard is weird about operating system installations. But it could also be both of the hard drives have issues.
 
You using 4gb or more of RAM when you install? Windows 7 is funny with large amounts of RAM when installing (64bit or 32bit)
 
I had similar issues but mine were due to burn speed. I don't know how fast you burned yours but I had to slow it down to 4x before my burner could get it right.
 
linkin said:
You using 4GB or more of RAM when you install? Windows 7 is funny with large amounts of RAM when installing (64bit or 32bit)
Click to expand...

No, I am only using 2 gigabytes of memory in my present system when attempting installations. And also I burned these disks at a low speed. I cannot remember what speed exactly but it was a low speed.
 
Edit: I just reinstalled my Windows XP. So I am thinking that the hard drive I was using has issues.
 
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With one of the hard drives I found the problem. The drive is a Parallel ATA hard drive. One of the 39 pins that connects to the ribbon cable on the hard drive was pushed in so it wasn't connecting with the cable. I used a pair of needle nose pliers and pulled the pin back out. I then installed Linux Ubuntu 10.04 on it and it worked fine. I am glad to find out my motherboard is not the problem.
 
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