How To Burn a DVD When It Doesn't Want To Work

There could be many reasons for continually getting cryptic error messages while you try to burn DVDs.

Here are four of the most common culprits:

Cheap DVDs

Remember, DVDs are just a few cents worth of plastic, manufactured in massive quantities. Sometimes you end up with a bad disk or a bad batch. Try a new disk, or a whole new brand, and you may have more luck burning your DVDs.

Dirty DVD Drive

Dust or debris in your DVD burner can prevent it from burning DVDs correctly.

Buy a lens cleaning disk and use it in your DVD burner drive. This can clean things up and give you a clean, successful burn.

DVD Burning Speed

It’s always tempting to burn DVDs at the highest speed possible. In theory, you’ll save time and can get more DVDs burned. In practice, though, higher speeds can result in unreliable burns.

Slow things down and set your DVDs to burn at 4x or even 2x. This may eliminate errors.

Overworked Computer

Sure, we all love to multi-task. Most of the time your computer can handle many tasks simultaneously, but DVD burning isn’t necessarily one of them.

When burning DVDs, step away from the computer and let it concentrate all of its energy on burning the disk. This can often prevent random errors during the burning process.