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I barely use windows, preferring Linux & Mac of course. I “upgrade” to Windows XP SP2 this morning when it became available, because you know, it’s supposed to be oh so much better…. and considering how fucking awful windows is in general, well….

I use Windows for a couple of things, mostly playing games and occasionally burning DVDs. I realized I had about 20GB of DVD ISOs unburned and found a mostly full box of DVD+Rs while cleaning up the office… making for the perfect chance to reclaim all that disk space.

Well, I’m sitting here with FIVE dvd coasters! I have never made a coaster with the particular burning app I used first… THREE coasters from that. I started thinking that perhaps the ISOs had become corrupted, it is possible, though unlikely, and proven impossible because I have MD5SUMs of the ISOS and they match. The media ought to be fine because four other DVDs were successful from that box previously. Trying another DVD app I made another TWO coasters, to come up with the total of five.

The DVD burning apps blame the media, while that is possible, it is highly unlikely because of the fact five DVDs failed… they’re not from a spindle, they’re individually packed name-brand DVD+Rs and again, four worked just fine previously.

My only conclusion is that SP2 fuxered my DVDRW drive or somehow prevents completion of the burning process, yippie, argh! Bastards! I’m so not happy about this.

I found a vague reference to something called DEP that could cause this, but from my understanding whenever SP2 decides to intervene and fuck up the way your app works it’s supposed to tell you about it. Regardless I’ve added my DVD burning apps to the exception list — of course I’m totally out of very expensive blank DVDs to see if this works anyway. I’m not particularly fond of the idea of wasting another disc just to see.