Solved Partition Wizard Pro 9 "Bootable Media Builder" fails to burn CD

[dsperber]

Partition Wizard Pro 9 "Bootable Media Builder" fails to burn CD

Just tried to create a bootable CD using Partition Wizard Professional's "Bootable Media Builder", and it failed to write anything to the CD.

==> This is Partition Wizard Professional 9's BMB feature, with the Jan 14 2015 build of the v9 product.

Tried it on two PC's, and it failed identically on both.

I've sent an email to Minitool support reporting this. Hopefully they'll respond with instructions as to what I'm doing wrong, or admission of this major flaw in this initial product release.

Can anybody else confirm that they see the same failure? Or does it work for you?

 

[jumanji]

Did you buy a license for the Professional version - $39?

Or did you download the demo version and trying to create a bootable CD with it which may not be possible?

 

[dsperber]

Did you buy a license for the Professional version - $39?

Of course.

This is not the ISO, which is free and that you simply download and burn to CD. It is the "bootable media builder" which is part of the Professional Bundle package, and which allows you to create other PW bootable media aside from CD, e.t. bootable USB pen drive. You run the program and supposedly it burns the CD, or USB drive, etc. Presumably it would produce the same bootable CD as the ISO, except that it would be the fully-featured Professional version of PW on the bootable CD rather than the free version of PW with its limited features.

So BMB runs, appears to check for the empty disk, puts out a few progress messages, but completes almost immediately and with no error messages. So it appears "successful" although it was clearly impossible to do this burning in the almost no time at all that it took to "complete". And in fact nothing at all was written to the blank CD. The CD is still empty at the completion of this process. Clearly nothing got written.


Hence my question. Am I alone in having this symptom? Or if you also have licensed the Pro version of PW and have also tried to use BMB to create a bootable CD, do you have the same symptom as I've described?

Still haven't heard back from MiniTool yet on my problem report email.

 

[jumanji]

Ok, have you tried writing it to a flash drive? Does that work? AOMEI gives me an option to write it as an ISO too and if PW gives you that option then you can write the ISO and then try to burn it to a CD.You will know whether your optical drive is getting cranky.

 

[dsperber]

Ok, have you tried writing it to a flash drive?

No. I actually want to have it on bootable CD.

You will know whether your optical drive is getting cranky.

I tried this on two separate machines, and it failed on both of them.

I just tried it again, but this time I didn't pre-insert the blank CD. I left the tray empty when launching the program, which is different than how I'd been doing it previously when I'd simply put a blank CD in the tray prior to launching the program.

This time I waited for the prompt that requests me to insert a blank CD before doing that and pushing the OK button. Previously I got the same prompt from the program at the same point in the logic, but since the blank disc was already inserted I simply pushed OK right away. And no writing occurred.

But this time, with no blank CD inserted prior to getting the prompt, when I got the prompt I opened the tray and inserted the blank CD and closed the tray and then pushed OK. And now, lo and behold the burning works!!!

This is with two separate machines behaving the same way, one with a SATA BluRay burner and the other a laptop with a standard CD/DVD burner. I still don't think this is a hardware issue. I "blame" BMB for not correctly dealing with the pre-inserted blank CD, but requiring that the blank CD not be inserted until after being prompted for it.

Anyway, it would appear the problem is now "resolved". I will let MiniTool know my "solution".

 

[jumanji]

That is strange indeed but then we don't know how the burners in the software behave. It is always better not to rely on the built-in burners. As I said it is better to write the ISO and then create your bootable CD with it.

 

[dsperber]

As I said it is better to write the ISO and then create your bootable CD with it.

Unfortunately PW doesn't provide a "file" (ISO) output option, from which the burning itself could be a second separate manual action.

With BMB you can only write to CD or USB directly.

Or, you can download the ISO (which is free) and burn it (say with IMGBurn or whatever), but again the software on the resulting CD is the "free" version of PW, not the Pro version.

 

[DavidE]

Interestingly the PW Power Data Recovery Bootable Media Builder does have an option to create an ISO.

 

[DavidE]

This PW page shows an ISO Image Recorder:
How to build Boot CD/DVD Discs and Boot Flash Drive with Bootable Media Builder?

 

[dsperber]

Interestingly the PW Power Data Recovery Bootable Media Builder does have an option to create an ISO.

View attachment 350466

I was totally unaware that this facility existed until you pointed it out!

But sure enough, using the version of BMB included in my PW Pro 9 bundle, all I had to do was click on the output type dropdown and yea verily there is the same "ISO image recorder" option for bootable CD!! Never knew that was there!

So, selecting that and pushing NEXT, I am presented with a "save as" dialog to create an ISO file with name of my choosing.

And continuing on, sure enough the ISO file is created successfully.

And of course I can then use IMGBurn to write it to CD. And this is the PW Professional bootable CD with all its features and functionality which got its ISO created by PW Pro, not the "PW 9 free ISO" you can download directly from the PW site.


Anyway, this is new news to me. Never knew you could create your own ISO to then burn yourself, rather than just using BMB to burn the CD directly... and which is where the problem discussed by my original post in this thread seems to exist, where you simply have to wait until being prompted by the program to insert the blank CD in order to have it properly recognized by the program so that actual burning actually occurs properly.

Nevertheless, it's convenient to also have the ISO to conveniently make additional copies directly from it in the future.

Live and learn! Thanks.

 

[jumanji]

When you have a dropdown arrow it pays to examine what it holds.

 

[DavidE]

You're welcome and glad to hear that helps.
Yea, we all live and learn