Win XP Pro SP2 UDF CD-R/DVD-R BSOD crashes solved

To all those who responded to my plea for help in solving my
Windows crash problem, my thanks. I did successfully solve the
problem, I believe 100%.

For those coming in to the OP now or just interested, some
background. While I am no technical expert, my belief is that
UDF (Universal Disc Format) was originally developed to support
the audio and movie DVD industry, if not originally, then when
DVD burners were invented. It uses a form of packet writing to
do its magic, with the intended benefit of much more flexibility
than Joliet, which most people use today.

In PC terms, the big benefit to UDF is long file names up to a
theoretical limit of 125 characters, almost double Joliet's
limit of 64 (including extension). I have learned empirically,
though, that anything over 114 is likely to result in many or
all the files on the disc being burned without error, but zero
length rendering them useless. A much smaller benefit is volume
names up to 32 characters vs. Joliet's 15.

I originally discovered and began to use UDF some years ago on a
Win XP Pro SP1 machine as I was searching for a way to prevent
truncation of long file names when burning backup CD-Rs. I don't
have to, of course, but I much prefer to put as much meta data
into my picture file names as possible. If I could get reliable
burns of over 114 characters, I would do so. Incidently, the UDF
discs I burned were also 100% compatible on my very old Win 98
SE box. My new DVD-Rs cannot be read on my old SP1 box yet,
until I put in a newer DVD reader.

However, I very quickly discovered when starting to use my new
custom-built Win XP Pro SP2 PC late last October that even
attempting to mount a UDF disc would almost always result in a
Blue Screen of Death crash in an unknown Microsoft device
driver. If I got it to mount, by turning off AutoPlay for
example, the disc would crash Windows sooner or later attempting
to read from it. MS provided no clue as to which driver(s) it
was, the KB contained nothing, and Googling confirmed that
others were seeing it, but neither understood why nor knew how
to fix it.

In a classic example of "can't see the forest for the trees", I
tried vainly to find the root cause myself, investigated hiring
a certified Microsoft Engineer, and posted requests for help to
a number of NGs, all in vain. I originally posted here because I
regularly see debates about how best to backup digital images
and thought perhaps someone had found a fix.

As it turns out, hindsight is 20/20. Some people suggested that
UDF is fundamentally unsound on XP and some suggested that
nothing had changed in SP2 and some suggested that it was either
the burning software or the media used causing the crashes. In
the beginning, I rejected the notion that this was a Roxio
problem, in either my older Roxio Easy CD Creator 5.3.5.10 (the
patch to make it XP compatible) or my new Roxio Easy Media
Creator 8. But, it turned out that it /was/ a Roxio 5 problem,
albeit /not/ from corrupt or incompatible discs.

My nephew who built my SP2 machine planted the seed that led to
a solution by suggesting that it might be an errant device
driver from an older, legacy app I'd installed on the brand new
PC. He and his computer business partner later verified that
they, too, could cause an almost instant BSOD crash on their
totally different XP Pro SP2 systems. As it turns out, the
common factor was Roxio 5.

Early in my problem solving investigation, I'd learned that the
native XP driver was c:\windows\system32\drivers\udfs.sys, but
when I did a simple XP search on my SP2 HD - after cleansing my
system of everything Roxio - there were 4 "udf*.sys" files. So,
I renamed them all, uninstalled both my CD/DVD reader and burner
drives, restarted Windows which promptly re-detected the
hardware, and let it reinstall the udfs.sys device driver.

That instantly stopped the crashes 100.0% (so far, my fingers
are still crossed). And, as a side benefit, the volume names are
no longer truncated.

I could well blame my good friend Bill the Gates for not finding
and fixing this or I could blame the SP2 beta testers for not
finding it. But, upon reflection, I (now) see that the
probabilities were against this being a wide-spread problem
since it would require users to simultaneously be running Win XP
SP2, Roxio 5, and UDF CD-Rs. It could /not/ be DVDs because
Roxio 5 can't burn them. I /could/ blame Roxio for not advising
me to upgrade to at least 6 to be SP2 compatible since I own a
licensed, registered copy of 5, but they didn't. In retrospect,
they should have, but it is still my bad for not more completely
researching any latent incompatibilities. It goes to my 6 P
Principle and my belief in never giving Murphy an even break.

If I think of anything I left out in this quite long post, I'll
reply to myself and add it.

--
ATM, aka Jerry
.

Relevant Pages