Nero - Power Calibration Error

can someone please help me...
I was burning an audio disc with nero express...
does about 5% of the burn and says "Power Calibration Error" and just stops...

I have no idea why, anyone know why, or of a solution?

Not sure if this will help or not, but have you tried opening the case and making sure the power cable hasn't come lose from the cd burner at all? Or even switcing the power connector to a different one?

Also have you tried cleaning the lens? Or different media? Maybe a trying a different program to burn? Or maybe changing the speed that you are burning at?

When I used Nero I used to get this error every now and then. I found that if I removed the song where the error pops up during burning from the burn playlist, the cd would burn fine.

My guess is there was an encoding problem in the song that could not allow it to properly be burned.

Maybe that is it for you.

The only problem with that is that at 5% chances are that it hasn't started burning anything yet, it is probably still doing the "pre-burn" stuff.

I believe when I used Nero it didn't count the pre-burn stuff in the %, it used to have a window at the top that displays current status messages and it would say all that was complete, and then the burning would start. After it reached 100%, it would display the closing out status and complete the burning process.

well...
it was burning on 1 cd, kept comming up with the error, it never actually burned on the cd...
welll i didn't think so.

I kept putting the same one back in when it asked for a blank medium. It would accept the one that errored..

I put a totally different CD in and it was fine..
burned perfectly.

now tell me if i am wrong but i thought nero would chuck the CD back out if it had anything on it?

thanks for the help

Correct, it would spit the cd back out if there was something on it. You probably just had a bad cd is all.

probably...
thanks all

HERE IS MY SOLUTION TO "POWER CALIBRATION ERROR"

Shortly this error is the result of a mismatch of the actual cd speed to the intended writing speed. For "speed calibration error" the only thing you need to do is to CALIBRATE the actual power (speed) of the CDROM to the intended writing speed.

1. Install Nero Burning Rom (preferably latest version)
2. Start NeroSmartStart
3. from the main menu select "Extras"
4. select "Control Drives Speed"

"Nero DriveSpeed" will start
5. click "OPTIONS"
6. Select (check) "run at startup"
7. Select (check) "start minimized"
6. Deselect !!!!!" Restore speed settings at startup" (unchecked!!!!)

7. be sure to have correct speed settings in the speed selection window
if not; add your writing speed selecting up or down error and ADD buttons (if you are planning to write X10 be sure to have X10 in the list ;if not add it)
8. Click OK at the bottom ang return back to Nero DriveSpeed main page
(REBOOT YOUR PC IF YOU ARE NOT WORKING WITH WINDOWS XP)
9. On Nero DriveSpeed mainpage click "Read speed" and select your writing speed and see if it matches the "CURRENT SPEED" on the right.
10. That is all::::: If "READ SPEED"="CURRENT SPEED" START NERO BURNING ROM AND WRITE YOUR CD
11. If not select other speeds first and seleck your writing speed finally (you may eject the CD tray and close it to refresh the speed check)

USE NERO DRIVESPEED EACH TIME YOU INSERT A NEW CD AND SELECT THE PROPER WRITING SPEED

TO TEST IF THIS WORKS YOU MAY SIMULATE WITHOUT WRITING ON THE DISK

ANY QUESTIONS. YOUR TURKISH FRIEND CENAP WILL BE HAPY TO HELP

best wishes without "power calibration error"

cenapcevli@yahoo.com

Actually, I have to disagree. NeroSmartStart, along with the TSR tray programs that come with Quicktime, Real Player, etc are just wastes of resources. They pretty much do absoultely nothing. The theory is to keep a little bit of the program running all the time so that when you want to run the program, some of it is already loaded in memory. Most people, however, have fast enough systems that they will never notice a difference and the little program will just sit there and eat RAM that could be used for other processes.

Reguarding the "Power Calibration Error," when you start to write to a cd, the drive will burn to a small section to the disc to adjust the laser power for whatever media is being used. Cheap media is inconsistent, and will frequently give hit or miss results during the power calibration. Therefore, when a disk has already been through a power calibation and failed, the media is unuseable becuase that test sector has already been written to - despite there is still no data on it. All you need to do is try another disc and stay away from the 100CDRs for $7.99 on eBay.

Likewise, the maximum write speed is read from a sector on the blank CD when the disk is spun up. You should never actually need to run a speed test, becuase the software will never let you burn higher than when the media is rated at anyway.

//And also this post is over a year old.

Thanks for Lucassic's kindly replay.
I saw the matter on many forums with people changing brand new CD writers or wasting CDs for the problem and needed to help. What I would like to add; I managed writing on very cheap low quality CDs with the method I have explained. I used to have the same problem even though my notebook was a brand new one(Dell inspiron 510m with 512 MB RAM). I was writing on CDs without a problem on DATA mode but when I switched to CREATING VCD mode I was always having POWER CALIBRATION ERROR imitating a hardware problem or incapability. My CD writer was not able write even on low speeds such as X4 when I tried creating a VCD. I noticed NeroDrive speed reads current speed different from what it shoud be and equalising them is solving the problem.
Best regards.

http://www.cenap.4t.com

THANX cenapcevli the solution is this..... very thnx....

I had a "power calibration error" with 5 Different SONY DVD+R 4.7 GB 1x -8x 120 min. I even used a Mermorex DVD+RW 4x 4.7 120 min DVD-ReWritable, but had the same Power calibration error message. I enabled the "Drive Speed" Control option in Nero burner and it's now burning fine with 8x on the same cd that gave the error before. The DVDs that were used never became UnUsable due to that error. I'm burning Solaris 10 OS ISO image.

I disagree as I've used disks after power calibration errors without problem.

power calibration error means your burner cann't read the disc properly, so either a problem with your burner or dud disc or brand of disc.

Also try buring at a slower speed perhaps and see if that helps, 9 times out of 10 though when you get a power calibration error it's the laser in the burner that's dirty or nackered.