Consider the following scenario:

• You have a computer that is running Windows Vista Service Pack 1 or Windows Server 2008.
• You use the built-in backup application to back up data to a slim-slot optical disc drive.
• The backup data requires multiple discs to save.
• After the first disc is full, you press the eject button to eject the disc.

In this scenario, you receive a “Preparing to eject” message in the notification area. However, the disc does not eject. When you press the eject button again, the disc ejects. However, when you put the disc back into the drive, the disc may be unreadable.

Consider the following scenario:

• You share the optical drive of a Windows Vista-based computer, and then you insert a CD or DVD disc into the drive.
• You use a network connection to access the disc from a second Windows Vista-based computer.
• You replace the disc with a different disc.
• You try to access the new disc from the second computer by using the same network connection.

In this scenario, you receive an error message that resembles the following:

The wrong diskette is in the drive.
Insert correct diskette into drive \\path_of_shared_disc\name_of_shared_disc

If you restart the second computer, you can access the new disc by using the network connection.

Consider the following scenario:

• You have a Windows Vista-based computer that does not have an internal USB optical disc drive. Instead, an external USB optical disc drive is connected to the computer.
• You run an application that calls the AcquireExclusiveAccess routine in the Imapi2.dll file to exclusively use the optical disc drive on the computer.

In this scenario, you may notice that the external USB optical disc drive is removed from the Windows Vista operating system. When you reconnect the optical disc drive to the Windows Vista-based computer, the operating system does not recognize the optical disc drive. Additionally, a yellow exclamation mark (!) may appear next to the external USB optical disc drive in Device Manager. You may receive an error that resembles the following:

Error 38 (CM_PROB_DRIVER_FAILED_PRIOR_UNLOAD)

Note: The external USB optical disc drive can be displayed correctly in Device Manager after you restart the computer.

Consider the following scenario:

• On a Windows Vista-based computer, you use Mastered mode to burn a file to a writable DVD that has a 4.7-gigabyte (GB) capacity.
• The DVD already contains a file that is larger than 2 GB.

In this scenario, you receive the following error message:

There was an error burning this disc. The disc might no longer be usable.

When you try to burn an audio CD by using Windows Media Player 11 on a Windows Vista-based computer, you may receive the following error message:

Please insert a blank disc.

This problem may occur if the following conditions are true:

• Roxio Easy Media Creator 9.0 is installed on the computer.
• The Drag-to-Disc feature in Roxio Easy Media Creator is enabled.
• The User Account Control (UAC) feature is enabled.

Consider the following scenario:

• On a Windows Vista-based computer, you are using a removable universal serial bus (USB) storage device such as a Secure Digital (SD) card.
• You click the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the notification area, and then you click Safely remove Device_name to remove the device.
• You reinsert the device.

In this scenario, you may receive an error message that resembles the following:

There might be a problem with some files on this device or disc. This can happen if you remove the device or disc before all files have been written to it.

Vista’s built in CD/DVD burning software works for creating data disks, but doesn’t offer the ability to use a disc image file to burn a disc. If you need to burn an image file, you’ll need a third-party application to do it, and thankfully, their are many to choose from. I use ImgBurn, which is not only free, but supports a ton of image types, and works great in Vista. ImgBurn not only handles CD’s and DVD’s, but is already capable of doing HD DVD and Blue-ray discs as well. The download is only 1.5MB, and once install, isn’t much larger than that, so it’s very resource friendly. It even supports command line switches, so it could be run from a batch file. Keep reading →

When you try to burn files to a writable CD disc or to a writable DVD disc in Windows Vista, you receive the following error message:

There was a problem burning this disc.
There was an error burning this disc. The disc might no longer be usable.