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Every time I burn a CD using Nero (or anything else) on my Windows XP machine, the entire system locks up for like 5 seconds. It happens when the burner starts making noise. Then when it comes back, it starts burning and does a great job of it. What is this lag and how can I stop it?

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got any USB hard disks connected that might have gone into stand-by? – Molly7244 Dec 20 '09 at 1:12
Actually, yes. But I just tested it with it removed and it still behaves the same way :( – Josh Stodola Dec 20 '09 at 1:29
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got DMA enabled? cdrlabs.com/forums/… – Molly7244 Dec 20 '09 at 1:49
Not sure, but that sounds promising! I'll check that out when I get home. – Josh Stodola Dec 21 '09 at 14:53
I went in to all six of my primary and secondary channels and all of them have DMA enabled if available. – Josh Stodola Dec 29 '09 at 0:00
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Is the DVD burner on its own IDE channel or is it daisychained off the primary HDD? (if you're using PATA HDDs, that is)

If it's freezing and your HDD and burner are on separate channels (best practice) and DMA mode is enabled, then it still sounds either like an IRQ problem or your machine doesn't have enough free resources to buffer the burn session in RAM (how much RAM do you have? Do you have On-The-Fly burning enabled?)

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Thanks for the answer. I have 8GB of RAM so I doubt that is the issue. What could this "IRQ problem" be? Whatis "On-The-Fly" burning and how do I enable it? – Josh Stodola Jan 19 '10 at 22:26
Gosh, I completely missed this discussion. Did you ever get the problem solved? "On the fly" burning is where the drive + software burn the contents direct to disc without using a hard disk-based buffer file. Unless your drive has adequate buffer underrun technologies (which effectively suspend the burning process while the realtime drive buffer is refilled) you can get buffer underruns. Given similar problems I had in the past with an HDD locking up my machine when it span up, I'd say it's an interrupt (IRQ) problem or a physical problem with the drive. – Christopher Oct 18 '10 at 14:17
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