DVD drive trouble.

So, I'm thinking it'll be good to back up my stuff on DVDs and format my hard disk, since it's been hit be trojan of some sort, I'm normally very carefull with stuff, but somehow my rig has been infected, so I go out, I buy a load of DVDs, and come back and try to start burning them.
Now it's all well till I actually click the 'start burning' button in Nero (Nero 7 to be more precise, that's what I use), then all of a sudden the program stops responding. I've tried five different DVDs same result everytime, it just isn't working, the drive is reading DVDs, playing movies, but it just won't write.
I'd be very obliged if I could get some advice about what to do. I've never had this kind of problem before so I'm at a complete loss of ideas, still I want to try clear this up myself before I take it to the technician, because he'll take a weeks to do this and I've got to go out of town soon.
Thanks.

Greetings, brother. May the wisdom and benevolence of our Lord Prosimian be your eternal guide to the path of righteousness and computing solidarity.

Have you actually cleansed your system of the trojan at this point? Were you able to identify what it was? Was/is it a rootkit, and perhaps still there in part or in while? Do you have any games installed that use Securom or Starforce? Can you identify any specific circumstances or actions that happened or you did that lead up to your burner not working right?

Hey, :beam:
Well the trojan most likely is somewhere in there, and that is the reason I've decided to format it, haven't been able to get rid of it using virus scans. The name is 'GenericDx' I think. Again, I also have M2TW and Kingdoms both installed, so most likely, securom is there too. There were no special circumstances really, it just happened suddenly, it just wouldn't write.
Btw, I really didn't get that; :sweatdrop:

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May the wisdom and benevolence of our Lord Prosimian be your eternal guide to the path of righteousness and computing solidarity.

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I thought Prosimian was some sort of extinct species of monkey?

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Originally Posted by asj_india

Well the trojan most likely is somewhere in there, and that is the reason I've decided to format it, haven't been able to get rid of it using virus scans. The name is 'GenericDx' I think. Again, I also have M2TW and Kingdoms both installed, so most likely, securom is there too. There were no special circumstances really, it just happened suddenly, it just wouldn't write.

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Gah, ok. What is it that you need to back up? Text files? Spreadsheets? Just savegames? Browser bookmarks? How much space are we talking here? Do you by any chance have access to an external USB HDD?

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I thought Prosimian was some sort of extinct species of monkey?

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Oh noes. You will be forgiven, he that reigneth over this forum is forgiving and righteous. And not extinct. At least not yet, as his wife and spawnlings haven't killed him so far.

:balloon2:

Whacker's laying it on a bit thick, but yes, I am one of the Mods of this sub-forum, LeftEyeNine is the other. And who you callin' extinct?

Oh right! I see. I crave pardon for what I spoke unwittingly in my ignorance. I bow to the two lord mod of this sub-forum ~D
Actually I'm backing up my family videos, you know, taken over years, I just keep saving them on my hard disk, so it's a bit over 22 GB now. I don't have any external drive of that capacity.
I'll be grateful if you could tell me what do you diagnose the problem to be.

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Originally Posted by asj_india

Oh right! I see. I crave pardon for what I spoke unwittingly in my ignorance. I bow to the two lord mod of this sub-forum ~D
Actually I'm backing up my family videos, you know, taken over years, I just keep saving them on my hard disk, so it's a bit over 22 GB now. I don't have any external drive of that capacity.
I'll be grateful if you could tell me what do you diagnose the problem to be.

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Yeesh, ok. At this point, you may wish to invest a few bucks in an external USB/Firewire/eSata hard drive as a backup method. External HDDs can and do fail so optical media backup once in a blue moon is a good thing, but all-in-all they can be very handy. Just something to think about.

Of course burning them to DVD would be a bit safer, but in order to do that you'll need to disinfect your system. In fact, you really shouldn't even be using it right now if you still have that trojan installed... If it's a rootkit you're going to be moderately hosed, those so called "rootkit removers" often don't work at all. Best thing you can try is obtain a good antivirus scanner, AVG makes a free one, and install/run each of the following: MS Defender, Ad-aware, and Spybot. Not guaranteed to work, but it might help. If you can at least get to the point where you can burn DVDs, then do so then blow away and reformat your system. I do not recommend that people attempt to disinfect and repair their systems after a particularly nasty trojan or rootkit.

:balloon2:

OK, I found what the trouble was, while I was online looking for AVG scanner, I came across a nice looking DVD writing app, shareware, so I downloaded it, and using it I managed to burn the DVD. Turns out there was no problem with the drive at all. It seems that Nero is malfunctioning. So, anyway, I've burned the DVDs and now I'll just reformat the infected hard disks.
Thanks for your help! :2thumbsup:

Verify what you wrote to DVD on another computer if you can before you blow away the old machine. I only mention that because I've lost data that way before myself. Glad things worked out for you!

:balloon2: