Problem burning dvd's with new external drive... need some help

I just got a Sony Dvd Rw DW-Q28A burner in a Galaxy external case. The first problem I ran into was that the drivers disc that came with everything was not compatatble with windows xp even though where I bought it from said it was. Well I went ahead and plugged in the burner and hooked it up through usb. My computer detected it and said it was succsessfully installed. I got NTI 7.0 cd & dvd burning software with the drive and installed it just fine. When I try to burn a dvd though I get a data buffer underrun error. It said to try a slower write speed so I did. The only two that are available are 8x and 6x and both had the same error. I was able to burn an audio cd at 40x just fine though. I'm using windows xp media center addition, have an AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1.24 GHz processor, have 512 mb RAM and over 35.5 gigabytes of free space on my hard drive. Did I get a bad burner or is there something I can do? Would really appriciate any help anybody has to give.

Okay I shut down a lot of things I had running including virus and spyware programs and I actually had a dvd burning without buffer overrun but then at about 70% done NTI had the error message "illegal request" and stopped burning. I put the dvd in my dvd player and it looks great... besides the fact that it isn't all there. I think maybe there is something wrong with NTI. At least I hope it's just that and not the burner. I suppose I am going to have to download Nero and see if I have any problems using it. I didn't really want to because I just have dial-up internet and the 32 mb download is gonna take forever but I guess I'm just gonna have to do it.

I downloaded the trial version of Nero and the dvd burn failed on there as well. Did I get a bad drive here? It was really close to done before it failed on Nero. Wow this is frustrating. If anyone can help I would greatly appriciate it.

 

well- make sure your burne rhas buffer underrun protectionand if so enabled(check docs for burner or menu on burning prog) this used to happen to me until i got nero 6(sssssssssssstttttutter free dvd and cd) .

Hopethathelped

 

also, search for the latest firmware for your burner

 

Okay... the buffer underrun protection is on, it had been on. That doesn't seem to be happening anymore though. Now it just comes up with an "illegal request" error in the middle or usually towards the end of the burn. One interesting thing though, I tried to burn the movie on a DVD+RW and it worked without any errors. Is it possible that the DVD+R discs I have are the problem? They work just fine when I use them to record things off tv with my DVR though.

 

maybe your dvd+r are a bad batch.

 

Well I bought some DVD-R disks and tried to burn the movie. It got to about 35% done then said the disk is not compatable with curren write. Man this is frustrating.

 

did you upgrade your firmware? you have to do that! i had bought a new sony 710a burner, and it was going at like .4x, when the max was 16x. firmware is very important. also, dvd+r's and dvd-r's are the same thing pretty much, only +'s are faster (go up to 16x), so it is unnecassary to purchase dvd-r's if you cant handle +r's.

 

Okay here is a big update on my situation. I decided to remove the drive from its exteral enclosure and install it interally. I thought maybe the problem was that since the drive was external the write speeds were to high for the usb connection. Which would probably explain why dvd+rw's would burn, beings there max speed is 4x and dvd+r's and cd-r's are 6x or higher. So with the drive installed internally I attempted to burn an audio cd using the NTI 7.0 software. Well I got the "illegal request" error once again. Well my next step was to check and see if the NTI software was the problem. I went ahead and tried to burn an audio cd on the trial version of Nero and wouldn't you know it worked just fine at 40x write speed. Next was the big test though, burning a dvd+r movie. Well after about eight minutes of burn time the dvd was burned successfully at 8x write speed using the nero software. So thankfully it looks as though there is nothing wrong with my drive and it was the NTI program that was causing the problems all along besides the one dvd burn on nero that failed which I believe was caused by to high of a write speed for the usb connection. Now that I think of it when I instlalled the NTI software it said that it couldn't be installed due to a corrupt file. Well I took the disk out and wiped it off then attempted to install again and it worked so I assumed everything was fine. Another thing I think I read somewhere that external drives hooked up through usb should not be used at write speeds higher than 4x. In conclusion it looks like my problem is solved. So unless you here from me here again everything is fine.