Member Avatar for aaemnnosttv

Hey everybody! First post!

I consider myself a pretty tech-savvy dude, and for the most part I'm able to solve just about any problem that has come up with my computers over the years. This one is kinda weird.

It only happens when I am burning several cds in succession from a disc image with nero (I haven't tested other programs). Anyways, after several cds (there's no consistent number or condition that I have seen to cause this) my computer will appear to freeze- can't move the mouse it doesn't respond etc. Only I noticed that it's not actually 'locking' up completely- it will let up for about 1-2 seconds every 30 seconds or so, process something I've done or update what's going on in some way, and then go back. I tried running the performance monitor just this last time to see if it would give me some clues as to what is causing this.

When it locked though, the performance monitor would just go blank and have total amnesia as to what had happened during the freeze time. From the little bits it did write, I found that the cpu usage was just slammed averaging over 90% maxing at 99.9xx%. I also noticed that the memory's pages/sec appear to be spiking very high as well.

The problem only seems to occur right as it's about to start a new cd, or I think it has also done it just after finishing, not during (maybe once).

system info: amd athlon64 1.8ghz, 2GB ddr400, asus a8n-e mobo, several HDs, plextor cd/dvd-rw drive, win xp pro.


This isn't a huge problem, my system has been stable aside from this issue. What can I do to find out what could be causing the problem? So far, I haven't been able to find a way to snap it out of this, and always resort to restarting.

Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by antioed

Dani AI

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Building on 's description and the suggestions from and , these are focused diagnostics and fixes that weren't mentioned but commonly resolve intermittent stalls during back-to-back burns: things that affect the I/O path (driver/firmware, transfer mode, pagefile placement), plus low-level captures to pinpoint the offender.

  • Verify the optical channel is using DMA rather than PIO. In Windows XP this can silently fall back after I/O errors; if the drive is in PIO the CPU and paging will spike. If PIO is seen, uninstall the IDE channel entry and reboot so Windows redetects it and restores DMA.
  • Update Plextor drive firmware and the motherboard chipset/nForce drivers to the latest vendor releases. Driver/firmware mismatches often show up only under sustained I/O.
  • Move the pagefile to a different physical disk than the source images or burn target (if possible) to avoid head contention and heavy paging during large file operations.
  • Try the same multi-disc sequence with an alternate burning tool (one that uses different low-level drivers). If the symptom disappears, the original burning stack is implicated.
  • Collect evidence: examine Event Viewer for disk/driver timeout entries around the stalls, and capture a short trace with Process Monitor (ProcMon) set to log file I/O and kernel events until the stall reproduces. ProcMon logs will often show repeated I/O timeouts or stalled threads that point to the offending driver.
  • Run a thorough memory test (Memtest86+) to rule out RAM errors, and check drive power/connectors and PSU health if nothing software-related appears.

Suggested order: fix/check DMA and firmware first, then pagefile and alternate software test, then collect ProcMon/Event Viewer data and run Memtest. These steps isolate whether the problem is driver/firmware, storage contention, faulty RAM, or a hardware/power issue.

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Member Avatar for hughv

We need to know what process is using all the memory.
In Task Manager, click on the memory column and the highest numbers will show at the top. Identify the process(es) and go from there.
Ending that process should free up the memory it's using.
Google "Nero memory leak" and you'll find some interesting discussions.

Member Avatar for antioed

Kinda sounds like it's getting stuck in a loop. Memory leak sounds promising but how to fix? Usually either something else is occupying a memory space or memory is spooling up somewhere that it cannot occupy...maybe a bad sector of the hard drive? I have seen it! I would do a quick chkdsk and, if not run recently, defrag...just for fun. I really know how to have fun, eh? I have also seen very poor performance from a CPU whose fan was not working properly. Eventually it would throw a memory error after crawling along badly for some time. Also check out a program called "Process Explorer" (from SysUtils now owned by Microsoft) as it will give you a more accurate picture of any child processes spawning in the "system" process context...could be helpful. It's like a task manager that actually gives you helpful information! Why they can't get something like that into the OS will never cease to baffle me...

Good luck!

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