When Burning DVDs The Windows Close And The Burning Fails But The Drive Keeps Spinning

I bought a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop new in Italy in December 2009 from a major computer store. The computer came installed with Windows 7 Home Premium (Italian), and I have installed on it an original version of Microsoft Office XP 2003 Professional Edition (English). The CD-ROM unit is a Matsushita DVD+-RW UJ890.Since I bought the computer I have sometimes had difficulty burning DVDs with the built-in Windows 7 burner function that I access from Explorer. Often in the past I have ended up with partially written DVDs. Nevertheless by using high-quality DVDs I have been able to burn DVDs successfully most of the time using the Windows 7 utility. I last used the utility successfully a couple of months ago when I burned a couple of DVDs to backup some photos.

Since yesterday I have been trying to backup my most important files onto DVDs. The attempt has failed in every case. First I copy about 3 GB of files from drive C: onto drive D: in Explorer. These are several hundred files divided into three different directories, consisting mostly of PDF, Word, Excel, and JPG files, some of them with names in foreign scripts like Cyrillic, Japanese, or Chinese. Then I insert a new DVD (either Verbatim or TDK) and attempt to master the DVD by selecting the option �write to disk� from the Explorer menu (whether from the menus at the top of the screen or by right-clicking on drive D: in the lefthand pane of the screen). A window pops up asking me for the name of the disk, whether I want it to be �flash� or one-time only, and the recording speed (8x, 4x, 2x, etc.).

Once I click �continue� to start burning the DVD, a window pops up to tell me that Windows is making an image of the disk, and then the window tells me that it has begun mastering the disk, giving me a countdown of how many minutes are left (6 minutes to 11 minutes, depending on the speed I choose). But no matter what name I give to the disk and what recording speed I pick, after 30-60 seconds the popup window and the Explorer window both suddenly close and the DVD unit�s writing light goes out, but the DVD unit continues to whir at high speed forever.

Here are the results I got yesterday with 3 separate DVDs:

1. On the first DVD I used Windows 7�s burn utility on a Verbatim DVD, and I ended up with 28 files burned onto the DVD (making it unusable).

2. On the second try I used some simple burn software that I had used before � Roxio Burn � on a TDK DVD, and ended up with 4 files burned onto the disk (but from different folders than the 28 files burned by Windows 7).

3. On my third attempt, after going offline, shutting down my antivirus software (AVG), and using Task Manager to shut down processes from that other burn software, Roxio Burn, I used Windows 7�s burn utility again on a TDK DVD and ended up with the identical 28 files that had I ended up with the first time, though this time I had chosen a lower writing speed.

In all three of these attempts the DVD unit continued to whir after the windows had closed, until such time as I ejected the disk manually.When I first encountered this problem yesterday I thought the problem might be caused by my antivirus software � AVG Free Edition � interfering with the writing process, because after one particular automatic update by AVG about two months ago I began having problems with AVG blocking Skype and placing some of my Nokia cell phone software in quarantine. But by disabling the HIPS element of AVG I was able to resolve those problems several weeks ago and begin using Skype successfully again. But just to be sure, today I disinstalled AVG completely and installed Microsoft Security Essentials. Because I had read in a forum online that Windows 7 might have conflicts with other burning software that was also installed, today I also disinstalled the only burning software that I had installed � Roxio Burn � and did a cold reboot. Before attempting to burn a DVD again today, I also used Task Manager to shut down some other processes that didn�t seem necessary, such as a Nokia autolauncher and a Java autoupdate process. I also changed the time delay for Windows� sleep or power-save function to one hour.

I inserted a new TDK DVD, accepted the disk name proposed by Windows, chose for the disk to be permanent rather than flash, and chose a burning speed of 4x. After 30 seconds I received a popup window with the following message:

�ST Service Scheduling has stopped working.�I ignored this message and did nothing, because often in the past when I have succeeded in burning DVDs with Windows 7's utility I have had this message appear, but if I do nothing I almost always have the burn proceed successfully. In this case, though, after another 10-20 seconds the Explorer window and burning-countdown window both closed, the DVD light went out, but the DVD continued whirring at high velocity. The DVD unit did not respond to my pushing the expel button by hand, and when I tried to expel the DVD using Explorer I only got an error message, so the DVD could be expelled only by shutting down the computer.When I turned the computer back on, I discovered that no files at all had been written to this DVD.below are the details from the ST Service Scheduling error message (in Italian, sorry). Whenever I get these ST Service Scheduling error messages I get them twice, i.e., after choosing �Close� one time the same message immediately appears again and I have to choose �Close� a second time.

Nome evento problema:APPCRASH
Nome applicazione:STService.exe
Versione applicazione:1.0.0.64
Timestamp applicazione:4ae02c43

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