Let me start by saying I've been building, fixing, and programming computers (professionally) for nearly thirty years, so I'm no rookie. However, every once in a while, I encounter something that baffles the crap out of me. I will also add that the solution to this prob is to replace the PC: working on that. Maybe someone can explain the problem, bec it's got me baffled....
I recently installed a new LG GSA-H54L DVD burner. The host is XP SP2, a 1GHz Duron w/ 512MB RAM (yeah, I know it's old, but it still does almost everything I want well !) Worked fine initially, then in a few weeks, started to blue-screen for every burn under XP. Most of the time, I use BurnCDCC, a very straight-fwd ISO burning util, which doesn't even need to be installed. Even that caused a BSOD. Nero 7 Ultra, ImgBurn, doesn't matter, they all crash mid-way thru a CD/DVD burn.
I also use Linux, Slax and Knoppix (two live CD distros), mostly. Eventually, even K3B started SIGSEGVing w/ every burn. However, K3B will at least finish the burn, bef (gracefully) blowing up. That is, the OS is still fully useable, while the burner app has failed.
To make this story more perplexing, I happened to notice that if I burn (CD or DVD) ISOs, up to two copies, I can burn successfully w/ read-after-write verification (that is, using K3B.) OTOH, if I try and create a fresh CD or DVD project and burn it directly to media, K3B will SIGSEGV w/o fail !
Ah, RAM probs did you say ? My 1st thought, but I have a rec edition of Memtest86 and used it (let it run for 30 mins), w/o incident. Moreover, I do some pretty RAM-intensive stuf under Windows, w/o BSODs. The only thing that consistently crashes are the burner apps.
I repeat, this isn't a distress call. I'm merely trying to satisfy my curiosity about a mystery. I hate the idea dismantling this PC, as it's served long and faithfully, but when ya gotta go, ya gotta go.
Any ideas ? Later....Jet