I was trying to copy a DVD the other day and though it went through the motions nothing was written to disk, this was on the XP machine.

That disk was a DVD of photos someone had had created, from a shop, from their digital camera and the DVD included Kodak Photoshare. I tried copying it a second time, on the Vista PC, and noticed this time that a message was displayed about the photographs being copyrighted. This time the disc was copied apart from the photos.

This morning I tried to write a disk, on the XP machine again, of (opensource) software for someone and again it went through the motions of writing the disk but afterwards the disk was empty. This time it was a CD not a DVD. Bells started ringing. I remember that a year or two ago I had a similar problem in that I couldn’t write to any CD or DVD. That time it was something to do with a missing aspi.sys file, which I think is responsible for the actual writing to a disk. I did a search for that file and couldn’t find it so I ran sfc and that immediately wanted the XP disc so that the O/S could repair itself. Half an hour later, when that had finished, I did another search for the aspi.sys file and it still didn’t exist.

The software I use for writing CD’s and DVD’s is Nero, that nice little neat bit of software. I ran the Nero software disc and let it repair itself and it still wouldn’t record. I then ran the Nero Infotool app which tells you all about the CD/DVD writing software and hardware on the PC. On the ASPI tab, for System ASPI, it said ‘ASPI installation is corrupted’. That’s probably because the aspi.sys file doesn’t exist on the PC. The status for the Nero ASPI installation is ‘ASPI is installed and working properly’. So why do I have trouble writing CD’s and DVD’s with the Nero recording software?

I’ve got a feeling the AnyDVD software drivers are getting in the way somewhere and messing up the recording process.

Over a period of time my registry has obviously gotten very large as my XP PC takes forever to start.

A good way to find out how large the registry is is to print each of the registry keys out so that, via the printer icon, you can see the size of the spool file and also the number of pages to be printed. I also thought I’d check, once and once only, some of the values.

The first key I printed was HK_CURRENT_CONFIG which was only 8 pages with a file size of 145k. Next I tried to print the HK_CLASSES_ROOT key and the file size had got to 1.00 gig, a total of over 1 million pages, and it was still writing the print file before I cancelled it. Blooming miracle XP even starts.

Had a go at printing HK_CURRENT_USER and the file size was 149mb with a total of 6.711 pages. Tried HK_LOCAL_MACHINE and gave up as it was stuck reading the key and hadn’t even started writing the spool file after 5 minutes. This probably meant that it was going to be larger than the HK_CLASSES_ROOT key.

Lastly tried HK_USERS and this file was 174mb with 7,958 pages. So that wasn’t printed. So now I know how large most of the keys are but haven’t a clue how to get them to a more manageable size.

Tried to use Nero Vision to import a video file which I had copied to my hard drive. Gets to 81% and fails. Tried a 2nd time and fails at 81% again. Restarted Nero Vision and it hangs.

Inserted the Nero disk and let it repair the installation. Tried importing the same file and it failed at the 81% mark again. Tried importing from the mini DVD and it failed at about the 40% mark. No doubt I’m doing something wrong.

Quote of the day

‘After the last of the 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed’ De La Lastra’s Law