That's why I like IMGburn, it pretty much is just a Burning Program, with no extra poopola to use up Ram or Video. Programs that have a lot of pretty images and fantastical video effects, like transparency and little pop out balloons, well they look "cool" but they use way more resources then is needed to do the actual job, and this interferes with burning speed.
Most new DVD and CD burners, and even Blu Ray burners have "Smart Burn" which prevents coaster making by keeping a huge Buffer containing the image you are burning, so when a fanciful program, like Nero or Roxio is being used, and all of their little Ram Sucking "Helper modules", this can screw you up big time.
ImgBurn is just a simple interface, with an EZ Picker for choosing what you want to do, and nothing else unless you choose to show the Log Window which is a good idea. Another program I used to use all the time was called CDR-WIN, but it was a small program, used for burning BIN+CUE images, but it was expensive, like 50 bucks for a little 5 MB Program, but it was a good program, for a while THE only program for burning BIN+CUE.
BIN+CUE was a popular format for groups who shared CD audio in the "NewsGroups" (UseNet- I don't know if most ISPs have access to it anymore, it is the original social networking platform, for posting messages and it allowed Binaries to be attached. You had to use a program called "Agent" to upload your data and download the pieces of the messages, it would automatically assemble the Binary. I havent heard of it in a long time, but that's where the making of Bin+Cue files began, because you can have one huge WAV or MP3 file, and the Cue Sheet tells the Disk Burner exactly where to pout the track breaks for Redbook Audio, it was pretty amazing actually. But this is an old protocol, it was used heavily when some of us were still using 56k Modems dialing up Newsgroups to get to the FTPs like Tucows, and the "Newsgroups" were just a function of the BBS which you could get to is you had a SLIP account and Term Server access. (I Miss those days).
But the main thing is that you can't just "Burn" your CD and then take it out and use it, you have to "Verify" it- And that's what I really like about Windows 8 and 8.1 because the Image Burn program which is built into Explorer automatically checks the Burnt Disk against the Data you selected, or the ISO image you burned.
This whole thing is odd, because with Windows 8 and New PCs and Laptops, the CPUs are faster, there is more RAM Available, and CD and DVD burners are fairly smart now, so that your Burner was affected this way, is puzzling.
I am using an old Lite-On DVD Burner, and the door does not like to open. I have an Asus SATA-II Burner on my other machine, originally that one used to burn Coasters if it was a DVD image, but when I upgraded to Windows 8, it stopped.
But I never use any of those programs like Roxio or Nero.
Most of the stuff you need if you handle a lot of ISO images is free:
IMGburn (Build a Disk or burn an image) - But it does not like to burn Audio Disks - I think it can, but I don't know how.
IMGburn actually has the best features, look in "Settings" if you get it, there are thousands of ways to set it up.
MagicISO (Mounts ISO images, and many other formats)
Windows Explorer (Built In - Assembles disks to burn or burns and mounts images)
Windows Media Player (Burns Audio Disks)
iTunes (In my opinion, the BEST, makes the best Audio CD's because it uses CD-TEXT to insert the Meta-Data).
If you want to have more options, for instance, editing ISO images, you can use UltraISO, which is about 25 bucks. The free version will do some of it, but it has a trial and nag screens. UltraISO can also hook into the main Burning engine of Nero and burn CDs and DVDs, it also has an internal burning engine, but it is not very good.
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