John Ferrick highlights a serious problem suffered by too many Windows users - incompatibility between different CD/DV burning programs
Windows and the IBM-PC compatible architecture upon which it sits are supposed to allow third-party companies to design programs and hardware that work reliably together. But theory and practice are often quite different.
Today, as retail prices of CD/DVD burners plummet, these units are increasingly being fitted as standard to PC systems. When most Windows users think of burning software, the name they first think of is Roxio or Adaptec, the company from which Roxio spun off and which established the primacy of its Easy CD Creator software and Direct CD direct-to-disc packet writing utility.
Unfortunately, in a number of situations, rather too many folk have come to think of these programs as meriting different names - Easy PC Destroyer and Destroy CD.
Somewhere along the line in the development cycle of these products - and of Windows - fundamental flaws in the grand scheme were introduced in an effort to make it possible for CD-R or DVD-R/+R discs to behave and look like hard disks.
A good few years ago, I became a victim of Direct CD when I realized I needed to uninstall the program to resolve some stability problems on my system. I used Windows’ Add/Remove Programs option but after a reboot discovered that my CD drive had disappeared. Nothing I did managed to get it back so, in desperation, I did a complete clean install of Windows.
The general wisdom among friends was that I must have had done something wrong but the problems I suffered originally were caused by a clash between different programs able to write to CD. Adding Roxio to Ahead’s Nero and Sonic Foundry’s Sound Forge was the root cause.
Today, that fundamental flaw remains and too much CD/DVD writing software from different makers - sometimes even from the same maker - simply cannot co-exist.
I’ve had quite a few machines that I’ve wanted to use for video editing - usually Dell PCs with CD burners, all of which came with Easy CD/Direct CD pre-installed. As I have been converting these machines over, and installing a variety of software, problems kept cropping up.
One machine running Sony’s DVD Architect worked perfectly until I decided to add Nero Burning ROM. Thereafter, it was impossible for DVD Architect to encode and burn a DVD without a fatal error. But, the same files, dropped into Nero caused no problem and created a perfect DVD.
More recently, on a system with Pinnacle’s Edition, I added two further Pinnacle products - Studio 8 and Instant DVD Copy. Since then, Edition couldn’t even find the PC’s burner. Of course, I’d tried simply to uninstall Instant Copy from the first machine and this had no effect.
Despite - or because of - the fact that such incompatibilities are so well known, some vendors say (as Pinnacle did recently), when asked about the compatibility of their products with Roxio’s that they did not even bother to test this combination.
So why do we have this stupid situation? First, it seems as though the testing and certification being done with Microsoft on products and drivers isn’t adequate. Does anyone do any checking of what happens when DVD/CD writing software gets installed?
Users are having major problems and all the makers do is point fingers at one another. Since no one is trying to sort things out, Microsoft itself MUST step in to do so - no one else is willing or able to carry out the massive task of compatibility checking that is required.
CD/DVD writing has become essential for many ordinary PC users, so the risk that new software can destroy a system and require a clean install is not acceptable.
I remain amazed there’s not already been a massive revolt demanding refunds and compensation - I’ve had more systems destroyed this way than from any virus. Perhaps we need memory-resident programs akin to virus checkers that warn if a new bit of software is going to destroy your PC?
