Trying to isolate cause of Nero and Winrar problems

[cdburrus]

My Windows XP Pro installation has every current Windows Update patch and driver. Here's my problem: When trying to unrar a bunch of files into .cue and .bin files for burning a cd, instead of taking the 2-3 minutes it should take, it takes 90 minutes to decompress. Somehow related to this, when I try to burn any cd, it still works, but that also takes about 90 minutes instead of just 3-7. I was wondering if Intel Application Accelerator could be a possible cause before (as it was the last significant app I remember installing), yet I've not heard of anyone having any real problems with it. I wiped my C drive and did a reinstallation, sans IAA. Everything seemed to work just fine. For a while. I'd not added any non-standard apps and was naturally confused, so I did another rebuild and the very first apps I installed after the Intel Chipset utility (my mobo is an Abit TH7-II RAID) were Winrar 3.9a and the latest Nero. Same problem, but without IAA or any XP patches on the system. Since I use Winrar and Nero frequently for backups, this is unacceptable. If anyone can please help, I'd be most appreciative. Thanks.

 

[dijital]

not sure about winrar, but in nero do you have it set to burn only and not test?

either way, i know it shouldnt take that long. it shouldnt even take that long if you had a 1x burner.

post your system specs also. that may help out a little.

 

[cdburrus]

Everything's on the correct settings and it's worked before perfectly. Just did another complete wipe of the system last night and have installed everything else but winrar/winace and nero/cdrwin (problem isn't program-specific). And, on an interesting note, on a completely bare XP Pro install (no patches, IAA, drivers, etc.) the same problem exists if I just install winrar. IT was happy exploding stuff to any other format, save for creating .cue and .bin files in a reasonable time. (same results when i uninstalled it and used winace). Anyhow, here are current system's specs:

Abit TH7-II RAID P4 mobo
Lite-On 24x10x40 burner
Creative PC-DVD 6x
Creative Encore 6xr3/Hollywood Magic +
Creative Audigy OEM
3COM nic
GeForce 3 Ti200
80gb HD
40gb HD
30gb HD
8gb HD
512mb RDRAM

Hopefully, when I try installing Winrar tonight, it'll like .bin files again. And I know the .bin files it's trying to make aren't corrupt since i've used the same ones a few times already successfully a few days ago. Also, Norton Windoctor currently shows 0 problems, and the system works smoothly otherwise.

 

[Geffy]

could it be a problem with XP handling CUE and BIN files, it might be trying to interpret them.

You could also try disabling XP CD Buring (its own app) I think you do this by accessing the Administrative Tools->Services
Then change IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service to stopped and manual. Doubel Click it, change it to Manual and Stop the service.

Might help but I am not sure.

 

[cdburrus]

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll check on that after I find my way out the winrar/winace half of the mess. Everytime one of those programs can correctly explode a .cue/.bin file, there's no prob with the burning. I'm checking a few other leads now too.