SP2 problems with Adaptec DirectCD & EasyCD creator 2

[xor]

I recently upgraded my HP Pavilion to W2k and my latest problem is, in order to get my CD Drive to work with CDs created with Adaptec DirectCD and EasyCD I have updated W2K with SP2. The CD Drive works great now (well, after I spent several hours removing some software and drivers and rebooting). And once I re-installed the updated HP 7200e CDR drivers my CDwriter is recognized and can read CDs. But when I install EasyCD creator my system spontaneously reboots every time I put a CD into the CDWriter. When I install DirectCD and reboot after the install I get a bluescreen and stop error. Anyone know a solution? Got any ideas?

TIA

 

[loacadmin]

We are running a win 2000 on a HP Vectra with HP 9100 series writer. What version of Adaptec easy cd creator are you using? We had 3.xx which I found out was not compatible with Windows 2000. It was causing our computer not to reboot or turn itself off. We recently upgraded to Adaptec easy cd creator 4.xx which has fixed the problem. This also included Direct CD.

 

[roban]

I run Win2k Pro and Adaptec East CD 5 Platinum. I have no problems with this version at all. What version of Easy CD are you running?

 

[a073235]

This was a common, known problem with older versions of all the Adaptec software under Win2K with many types of hardware. Go to their site and get the latest dot releases to see if these easily clears up the problem. I've had the crash/reboot problem when inserting CDs as well and this fixed it. Heath
Principal Systems Engineer
Desktop and Mobile Platforms

 

[xor]

I have EasyCD 4.02 and as suggested went to the Adaptec site (now roxio.com) and downloaded the 4.05 patch. I uninstalled EasyCD Creator 4.02 then reinstalled it and installed the patch before rebooting (I remember I had to do this for an earlier patch for one of their products). I have played around a bit to see what does and does not cause my computer to reboot. It seems that the CDWriter can read CDs fine, with EasyCDCreator open I was able to read the contents of a CD-RW (although I couldn't remove files) and yet as soon as I put a blank CDR in the drive, it causes my computer to reboot. And ideas?

I am hesitant to pay for and upgrade to version 5 because I have had such a long history of problems with this particular software (Win98 incompatibilities, etc).

Thanks in advance.

 

[a073235]

Hmmm...I can understand your hesitation to get the upgrade now, and I'm at 4.05 without problems. I'm at a loss on this one... Heath
Principal Systems Engineer
Desktop and Mobile Platforms

 

[xor]

Heath
I've got an HP 7200 external CDWriter which plugs into the parallel port and then allows me to plug another device, such as my printer into the CDWriter so they can both use the parallel port, the printer kind of piggy-backing on the CDWriter. Do you have a similar setup? I am just wondering if it is something with to do with that. Although I would think if that was the case it would have a problem with reading CDs as well, which it doesn't. It only seems to have a problem with the blank CDs. Frustrating...

Can anyone recommend CDWriting software other than Adaptec EasyCD/DirectCD?

Donna

http://donnamiller.net/

 

[roban]

I like Ner 5.5 myself. I can't understand why Adaptec requires 84MB.

 

[xor]

Hi Roban, was Ner a typo, do you mean Nero 5.5? I downloaded a trial version of Nero, but it couldn't recognize my cdwriter. It looked really good though. Is there something special I have to do to get it to recognize my cdwriter, or should it just pick that up automatically? I'd be willing to give it a go if I could just solve that little problem. I've heard good things about it.

Donna

http://donnamiller.net/

 

[xor]

Cool! Thanks Roban, I will check it out.

Donna

http://donnamiller.net/

 

[xor]

Just checked out that link Roban -- no thanks, I'm not interested in warez/porn related sites.

 

[loacadmin]

I just tried to write a CD in Easy CD Creator 4.xx and guess what? when I opened the program it Rebooted

This is on a different machine this time which is a public one and has a lot of security on it. I'm assuming that this is the problem because our admin computer (logged in as admin) works perfectly.

Cheers.

 

[xor]

Ah, now that could be the problem. I've been doing lots of research into this problem, and the roxio site has a pretty good database. One of the things I read was that when you install you should be logged in as Administrator (not as a user with administrator priviledges). I was logged in as user with administrator priviledges (it's just my personal home computer so I have it set to automatically log me on when I boot up). So sounds like that might be the cause of my problems after all. And maybe your public machine was installed the same way (by a user rather than Administrator)? There are very special instructions for uninstalling these programs too. I have uninstalled in order to try the software I found on the HP site (their solution to the W2K problem), but one of them (equivalent to DirectCD) couldn't recognize the CDWriter. And the other keeps having problems, I tried to burn about 8-10 times last night and had one success. So, maybe I will log on as 'Administrator' and give EasyCD another go. Geez, this is getting tiresome now!

 

[loacadmin]

I did actually install it via the administrator mode. The stupid thing is on the public machine under the "patron" mode (the secured account) Direct CD works fine.
I'm thinking about installing the non "HP" version of Windows 2000 instead of the disk that comes with the computer as the disk seems to be lacking some security options for some reason. Hopefully that might help. That way I should be able to "unsecure" the easy cd creator directory.

 

[gfincati]

I was running EZ CD Creator v4 on Win 98SE and everything was fine. I switched to Win2k - after that no luck with EZ - I tried everything and finally switched to Feurio for music and NTI for data. Now all is well.

 

[Guest_imported]

I've had similar difficulties with CD Creator 3.5x in Windows 2K. After upgrading everything to the latest version they would let me patch to, things worked except that everytime I put a CD-RW in the HP drive my computer reboots (CD-Rs work fine). It also doesn't reboot if I put cd-rws in my dvd drive btw, so the HP is to blame.

What you can try doing is turing off autoplay (if you have it on) and then running ez cd creator manually so windows doesn't have to correlate cdblank with running ez cd creator. Note that even if this works, it is a work-around not a solution (in my case, I've just stopped using cd-rws).

CDRwin by Golden Hawk Technologies was a good cd writing program with lots of control (although less user-friendly if that is an issue), but I haven't used it since Win98 and that was over two years ago, so I'm unsure if it is W2K friendly or not. It also may be that the drivers for 2000 are to blame in which case a different program probably won't help. (My drivers don't support hibernate mode and some other nice W2K features so I question their robustness, but my burner is an older HP than yours so that might not be an issue).

 

[wino777]

Recently, I added Easy CD 5 Platinum to my Windows 2000 machine and at first all seemed well...I havent used Adaptec (or now in this case Roxio) in years and was hesitant at giving them another shot, but I went for it.
Even though I love NERO, Fireburner and CDRWIN, there are (believe it or not) features that they dont have...
so...Like I said at first everything seemed OK, but then weird things began to happen to my otherwise rock-solid Windows 2000 machine...
I decided to go and look around and see if anyone else was having issues and what I found blew me away!!
I searched Google for "win2k easy CD 5" and the first response was something like "If you have Win2k DONT INSTALL EASY CD CREATOR 5"!
Why didnt I know this?? Some links here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19099.html

http://www.makeitsimple.com/article.php?sid=81

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/19009.html

and here is the "fix" from Roxio:

http://www.roxio.com/en/support/ecdc/ecdc501s.html

although I have read that this "fix" just opens the door for other bugs...
Anyone tried it yet??
Maybe I will tomorrow, if I do I will definately post the results...

 

[xor]

Wow, with all the problems and bugs Easy CD Creator and Direct CD have you wonder how they can stay in business and ever get a good review. It's good to hear it's not just me though.

one solution I have found (well, not a complete solution, but better than nothing)...
I went to the HP site and went looking at the drivers section again for my CDWriter and found that there was some software for burning available there as well. Now this is what HP is making available for free as a solution. There is one that is similar to DirectCD, but it just doesn't work for me. It can't recognize the CDWriter!

There is another app available for free called RecordNow (similar to Easy CD Creator). I eventually got it to work (after creating half a dozen coasters).

What I found I have to do is quit absolutely every other application (as I had to do your Easy CD as well) and set it to record at the very slowest speed (1x).

I have made data CDs successfully.

In order to make an exact copy of a CD (as for a backup) I have to put the original into the CDWriter itself (it won't work just copying from a CD in the CD drive). It then reads and stores an image (or something) to disk, so you have to have the disk space. It doesn't give you an option which partition, so presumably it needs enough space on c drive. When it is finished copying the image to the hard drive it spits out the CD and asks you to put in a blank CD.

It works, but it's a far from optimal solution. Still it's free and I have a working solution to use while I check out alternatives (I am checking out NTI at the moment).

Just thought I would let you all know what worked for me just in case you wanted to try as well, I might save you a few coasters ;-)

Donna

http://donnamiller.net/

 

[wino777]

AHHH -- Success!!

I followed the update/patch instructions on Roxio's website

-- found here -->

http://www.roxio.com/en/support/ecdc/ecdc501s.html

and so far everything seems normal...

I did cheat a little in so far as I did not install "Take Two", the app which supposedly causes the funkyness, an app which I would have never used anyway. And I did not install DirectCD, an app which I have never used because back aways NERO had some trouble with it and I do use NERO extensively.

Other than that I installed the whole shebang, applied the two patch/updates, rebooted and all is well.
If you do care to use this program with Win2kSP2, I strongly suggest you follow the instructions from Roxio.

If anyone does this AND installs Take Two AND has success, I would love to here about it...

Thanks

 

[workjohnout]

Well, I installed Easy CD Creator 5.0 Platinum on my machine...big mistake. Now it won't reboot at all. I tried emergency repair and safe mode but nothing works. It gets stuck on the big white startup screen...just hangs... Seems like I'm left with having to re-install Win2K. I really don't want to do that. Anyone know how I can get the machine back up without re-installing???

Prior to this I was using Easy CD Creator 4 just fine.
workjohnout@hotmail.com