CD burning lockup with WinXP svcpk 2 update

Installation of WinXP sp 2 on my system has rendered me incapable of burning CDs. I have tried using both RecordNow and the Windows Media Player 9 (then 10). WinMP freezes during the burn stage of the first track, whereas RecordNow appears to be successful until it reaches 98% complete, then freezes. Once frozen, the program cannot be shutdown except through taskmanager and even then the process thread remains unkilled until a power-off. The resulting CD isn't a total coaster, usually having a playable first track, followed by a partial second track which turns to bit-skipping garble midway through.

I have tried disabling the IMAPI svc, as well as the windows security center, to no avail. My system is an HP Pavilion 304w, with 384 Mb RAM, and an additional harddrive (2 total.) Any suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks.

 

try burning the disc at a slower speed. what speed is your writer? if it's 48x then you shouldn't really run much faster than 32x otherwise you can lose quality. also, have you tried burning with nero, because that sometimes gives better results!

 

I have not tried at a slower speed, however previous to XPsp2 I suffered no difficulties burning. The burner is a CyberDrv CW058D CD-R/RW 32x/10x/40x. I also have not tried Nero, the sudden and very similar difficulty with both RecordNow and WinMP9&10 has me thinking it likely to be unrelated to a specific burning program. (I may of course be in error in this assumption.)

Thanks for your rapid response.

Also, although it may not be relevant...I have nonwindows apps installed in a drive (D:\) other than the windows host (C:\), and both drives are located on separate harddisks. In addition, my pagefile is split between two drives, with one on each harddisk.

 

The burner program is RecordNow v4.50 from VERITAS Software Corp.

Thanks.

 

I tried the suggested burning program CDburnerXP, with the same behavior exhibited as previously described. In addition, I slowed the burn speed to 16x and then 8x with no luck. Any further thoughts by any as to what might be the best course of action from here? Thanks.

 

I uninstalled both RecordNow and the CDburnerXP, followed by a registry clean using Norton's Windoctor. I now appear able to successfully burn a CD using Windows MP v10 (after reenabling the IMAPI service of course). I'm leary about mucking up a situation where I can once again burn tracks, yet MP is rather slow compared to RecordNow...so I suppose I'll try installing another burner at some point....I'll post again with an update when I do so. Thanks for suggestions and assistance with this problem.