Hindrances

Apparently I’m not supposed to do the posts on The Black Swan that I’d been planning. Every time I come in to do them, something happens that takes up all my time.  Tonight it was the disk I was going to burn of a music CD that is no longer playing properly in my kitchen CD player. An easy task, which I’ve done before.

First I had to search for the blank CD’s. Couldn’t find the ones I was most familiar with but did find a large, mostly full pack of new ones I vaguely recall having bought. I put in the disk, Windows Media Player read it, I dragged the contents of my CD-to-copy over to the burnlist and clicked “Start Burn”.  After awhile I realized nothing was happening. Thus began the quest to accomplish the burn. I quickly discovered that for some reason the “Start Burn” button was greyed and didn’t respond to the cursor. I have no idea why. The program is recognizing there’s a disk in the drive and can read it, since it’s telling me what it is and how many minutes it has to save things to.

I’ve used these disks before, as I found a couple I did last year for Christmas. I tried formatting the disk, went to the help file with the program then to the online helpfile at Microsoft. Where, for some reason someone thought it would be a good idea to repeat all the non-help I’d already received before I went online. I could ask “why is my start burn button greyed” but then I’d have to search the whole web… so I complained to my husband. He managed to transfer the files by bypassing windows media, and they do play on his computer after a long wait time, but alas do not play on the CD player in the kitchen.

So maybe I should try the “Start Burn button greyed” search. Hmmm… BRB…

…Okay, turns out others have had the same problem. They too were directed, even in the forums, to the same repeated non help on the website. No, the problem is not that I don’t have any titles in my burn list, thank you very much. Nor that I don’t know how to burn CDs. Nor that I cannot read and comprehend the simple instructions. The problem is that having followed all the instructions, my Start Burn button remains gray.

Finally then someone at the bottom of the queue suggested the whole, close it all down, leave the disk in the tray, then open it up and try again solution and while that worked for one person, it didn’t work for me.

Other suggestions were to reinstall WMP 11, or to reinstall Vista. Or to back up everything and …  Arg.

I’ve spent about an hour and a half at this now and I still don’t have my disk. But, computers being what they are, maybe tomorrow, after I shut it all down and restart, maybe then I can get my disk burned. 

In any event, I did not get my post done.

Or at least, not the post I’d intended to write.

0 thoughts on “Hindrances

  1. Loren Warnemuende

    …The REAL problem is that you’re using a PC and not a Mac 🙂 ….

    Seriously, I hope things work out soon! Nothing like the joys of technology, huh?

    I’ve been thoroughly enjoying your Black Swan posts and have a hold on a copy at our library. Very intriguing.

    Reply
    1. karenhancock

      That could be, Loren. LOL! As it turned out, my turn off the computer trick worked. I turned it off for the night, leaving the disk in, then restarted it in the morning and all went as it was supposed to.

      Glad you’re enjoying the Black Swan posts, too.

      Reply

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