well i do have 1.2gig left free out of 140 gig so it could be that, but i have 512meg ddr ram but it could be the hard disk space issue altho, if it is thats where the problem starts, how can u make space if you cant use the cd writer to burn thing to cd??

For starters, you could try zipping up a lot of the existing data that you plan to move?

lol oh well ive had the cd writer for 2 and a half years, its had a good innings i may just buy a new one instead lol theyre only £15 or so now

I was wondering when someone here in this thread was going to bring that up!

lol the thing is i like my 16x, it may be slow but its quite error free, unlike faster cd writers ive used at friends houses, once i wasted 28 cds out of 100 on a mates supposedly superior 52x :-?

Well, to be perfectly honest MaxPayne, my first reply in this thread was not directed to you...

In your case: "developped a strange rattling sound " <- sign from GOD that you need a new CD Writer and fast!

i have a wav of it opening if anyone really really wants to hear it lol, its actually quite amusing in the "god damn my cd writers broken" kinda way

homepage.ntlworld.com

These are my experiences with power calibration error:

In 1996 I had a HP burner, 2 speed. After a year it would only work sporadically, burning a cd, making a frisbee and burning a decent cd again. Half year after that, I only received power calibration errors. Because I did not know what to do about it at that time I bought a new cd-rw burner. This time a PHILIPS PCRW800 series 8x. After exact one year the thing stopped burning completely giving the error: "power calibration". I went to the computer shop and they apparently cleaned it out and said: "Oh you're a smoker right, that's so bad for your hardware no wonder it stopped burning. The drive was so filthy!". When I got home the burner STILL didn't manage to burn ONE cd! However! This problem was completely fixed when I installed a firmware update from Philips. Burned like a charm

It has now been working over 3 years! Until today! I got another power calibration error again. The firmware can't exactly be removed so, I don't know what to do if this error becomes persistent. After trying twice and failing, I just huffed and puffed into the drive trying to clear out some dust that may have gathered. I don't know if this is what did the trick, but it's burning now! The buffer level is different from other cds that I've burned. Normally it would go around swinging from 93-95% - now it's going steady at 98%.

All I know is, power calibration error has nothing to do with software nor with the cheapness of the cd-r you use (I'm using Philips CD-R that is the same brand as my burner for god sakes). Some burners perform better on different software packages, that's a fact. My burner seems to have a disliking of Adaptec products, it has buffer underrun way too fast. My friends' LG burner has a perfect buffer level under Adaptec.

Also, my drive is a CD-RW, and I had about 15 rewritables lying around that were really dirty and a bit scratched. So I cleaned them with the proper cleaning utilities. It always burned fine when they were completely dirty! But as soon as I cleaned them, none of them worked anymore! >.< Oh, and under windows XP, I can't burn CD-RW at all anymore. Weird stuff huh?!

OMG what the hell was that... Haha, it sounded like the time I put 2 cd's in ONE cd-rom drive of my old computer. I swear that thing was smoking when I came back from the toilet! >.< The tower was placed on my desk and I couldn't see if a cd was already in there... I have no other explanation as to why I was this stupid to put 2 cds in one drive *_*.

my problem is now fixed... i took the easy option and just bought a new one, got a nice black LG writer now and it burns fine, but, and this is the really really really funny part, since i installed my new cd writer....my DVDrom has now stopped working, FAN-BLOODY-TASTIC it wont read cds and wont even be recognised by windows anymore or even the bios, ive tried changing the jumpers, i even put a brand new IDE cable in and still no joy