Nero 7 issue - Nero Scout really annoying delays!

[Carol Haynes]

Having installed Nero 7 I was nonplussed to find that opening a Windows Explorer window had a delay of of up to 15 seconds before it was useable.

I tracked it down to Nero Scout a new utility for indexing media files in Nero 7. Personally I really do not want this function, and nothing would induce me to use Nero Home (their incredibly clunky media playing system) so I thought I will uninstall all the bits I don't want (and there are many).

To cut a long story short there is no way to uninstall Nero Scout, even if non of the programs it is designed to support are installed. You can disable it in the options but this still doesn'f fix the file browsing delay (it also affects Directory Opus).

If you want to get rid of it I have found that deregisterring one of the DLLs kills Nero Scout without affecting other parts of the package that I use.

If you want to get rid of Nero Scout hit Start > Run and eexecute the command:

regsvr32 -u "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\Lib\MediaLibraryNSE.dll"

assuming that you install to the normal standard folders. Note that the quotes "" are important.

As a bitchy follow on comment, I am really not impressed with this new version. It doesn't remember last use setting like Nero 6 did (eg. I have to manually select DVD every time I try to burn a DVD as it now defaults to CD even on DVD drives) and I am finding the new video components aren't as effective at importing DVD-VR format discs.

Add to that massive amounts of bloat and unnecessary extras (Yahoo toolbar is installed unless you are careful on the download page) and personally I wish I had stayed at version 6.

[mouser]

looks like nero is on track to be one of those great apps that goes on a path of bloatation and becomes unusable at which point the cycle resets and we start looking for another simple pure app that just gets the job done.

[nudone]

looks like nero is on track to be one of those great apps that goes on a path of bloatation and becomes unusable at which point the cycle resets and we start looking for another simple pure app that just gets the job done.

wise words, wise words...

[Carol Haynes]

Anyone know a decent basic burning alternative, preferably with a full verify?

The main reason I use Nero is that it can systematically verify the disc contents against the source when it has finished, few other utilitities seem to have this feature.

Can someone also explain (following an earlier thread) why Music CD copies suffer degradation in copying (hence the need for specialist software to copy them) when Nero compares sector for sector in RAW mode copying?

[Veign]

You should read the reviews on Amazon about Nero 7 - nothing good to say.  That stopped me from buying.  I am am sticking with the 6.x release - been happy with it and no problems.

[superboyac]

Anyone know a decent basic burning alternative, preferably with a full verify?

The main reason I use Nero is that it can systematically verify the disc contents against the source when it has finished, few other utilitities seem to have this feature.

Can someone also explain (following an earlier thread) why Music CD copies suffer degradation in copying (hence the need for specialist software to copy them) when Nero compares sector for sector in RAW mode copying?

I asked this very same question a few weeks ago at another forum.  The alternatives that I was pointed were called:
Cheetah CD/DVD Burner, and DeepBurner.  I tried both of them, and they are pretty lightweight programs, Cheetah seems to be very lightweight.  I liked that about them.  However, after using Nero for so long, I kind of miss all the features of Nero.  There are certain things about the interface of Cheetah and DeepBurner that feel "cheap", nothing very important, but you know how picky we get here.  I like Nero, but it's become way too bloated, it's very sad.  That being said, I still use it, but like you, I'm looking for a satisfactory alternative.  WHy do these software companies do this, it's so obnoxious.  It's like they start doing something very well, which was their burning ROM.  Now, they've thrown in everything and the kitchen sink.  It's just annoying.  If I'm not mistaken, Nero 7 is a 100 MB download now.  That's just silly.  Now, it has overlapping features with like 15 other programs I use, and of course, it does none of them all that well, except the Burning part.  At least they've still allowed the custom installation, where you can pick which components to install, but they've kind of bungled that up also.

I don't know what commercial/business motivations make this trend so common in these popular applications, but as you know, it's rare for it not to happen.  Software companies should stick to the "In 'n' Out" philosophy.  You start off as a hamburger joint, with only like 5 things on the menu, get really popular, and still only have 5 things on the menu.  Instead of bloating their menu, In n Out retains it's original philosophy, is still very successful, and still provides the best fast food burgers available.  Have you seen the workers behind the counter there?  There are like 15 people working like crazy back there in an area about half the size as a normal McDonalds work area, and all they are making are hamburgers and fries.  It's genius.

As you can tell, it's almost lunchtime.

[Black Mamba]

I can recommend a great burning app I'm using for almost 2 years now without any problem: Prassi  Ones. It has only a couple of files, it won't mess up your system at all and it has a great burning engine. It's not full featured but all it's functions are well implemented. Give it a try, almost all Nero users who switched to Prassi are delighted with it.

[Carol Haynes]

Does it support after burning data verification - this is the one feature I'm not prepared to lose.

[jroad]

I have also been scouting around for alternatives to Nero for the above mentioned reasons.

CDBurnerXP Pro http://www.cdburnerxp.se/ is a pretty good freeware/donationware app.  It does most media except dual layer, which is coming up soon (an alpha release was linked in the forum).  I have not used it for burning DVD video, which it lists as having limited support.

Features:

Writes all kind of mediums apart from double-layer DVD (follows in next version). Burning video-DVDs is limited.
Burn audio-CDs with and without gaps between tracks
Burn on the fly / Burn-proof
Supports most IDE, USB, Firewire and SCSI drives
Rip Audio-CDs to harddrive, obtain track-information (ID3-tags) from Internet
Burn and create ISO-files
Customizeable with many settings
Data verification after burn, create bootable discs
(will be) available in multiple languages
100% freeware - no adware or restrictions
bin/nrg->ISO converter, simple cover printing and much more!
Operating systems: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003 Server.

Also, it does have data verification in its detailed list of features.

[Carol Haynes]

Thanks I will check it out.

Just downloaded it - the main problem seems to be that UDF filesystem support is missing (required for DVD compatibility). But since it can burn ISO images it is easy enough to produce ISO image versions by other means.

Whilst exploring the website though I came across this little tool which looks fun DVDStyler for those of us who like to create our own DVDs. I have only briefly dabbled but it looks useful and free. It also produces ISO images of DVDs produced.

[Black Mamba]

Yes, it supports after burning data verification. And UDF for DVD's, too.

[Sentinel]

After much bloat from Nero I switched to Prassi/Traxdata ONES and have never looked back.  The recent upgrade cost from 6.6 to 7.0 of 40 euros was the nail in the coffin.  If you have ever used any of the Seagate/Prassi/Stomp solutions and were happy then ONES in the only way to go!

[nevf]

Nero is already too bloated and confusing. Sonic Digital Media  LE (Roxio) which came on my recent Notebook is nothing to get excited about.

I've been using DeepBurner for CD's and it works well, but my requirements are minimal. I did try CDBurnerXP Pro mid last year and didn't much like it either. Can't recall exactly why.

I might give ONES (weird name) a try.

I wrote an article a while back about copying all your Software CD's to ISO Images and then simply mounting these when you need to do a re-install. Saves searching for lots of CD's etc. For those interested see: Software Housekeeping Definitely worth a read.

[superboyac]

The only problem I have with Prassi is the somewhat inconvenient way of making a tree structure on the cd/dvd itself.  With nero, you have that explorer-like interface, where you have the folder tree in the left pane and the the files on the right pane, and you can create and move the folders around in both panes as you desire.  In Prassi, there's only one pane, so if you want to create a custom folder heirarchy on that cd that is different than the source on the physical hard drive.  To do this in Prassi, you have to create a new path, but you don't actually see it visually, you just see the path listed there.  Also, you can't see the files inside the folder, it just tells you how many files there are.  I don't know, I just like seeing the heirarchy before I burn.

It's a nice software though.  If they added the heirarchy thing to it with the explorer-like double pane, I'd probably drop Nero like it's hot (or whatever Snoop says).

[Carol Haynes]

I have now had a brief look at ONES and CDBurnerXP and they are both useful but neither seem perfect solutions. Perhaps both together ...

CDB is seriously limited by its lack of UDF filing system support, and looking at the forums it doesn't look as though that support is likely any time soon as the libraries used in the project don't support UDF. Even the new version (now due for over a year and still in beta form) will not support UDF which is a great shame.

ONES looks good for copying stuff but doesn't seem very intuitive building your own content.

[brotherS]

To cut a long story short there is no way to uninstall Nero Scout, even if non of the programs it is designed to support are installed. You can disable it in the options but this still doesn'f fix the file browsing delay (it also affects Directory Opus).

If you want to get rid of it I have found that deregisterring one of the DLLs kills Nero Scout without affecting other parts of the package that I use.

If you want to get rid of Nero Scout hit Start > Run and eexecute the command:

regsvr32 -u "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\Lib\MediaLibraryNSE.dll"

assuming that you install to the normal standard folders. Note that the quotes "" are important.

Thanks, Carol! I really do NOT like software that's forcing additional software on my PC without asking. Especially, when it's really slowing things down...

[Carol Haynes]

You're welcome - I certainly have had fewer issues and a faster machine since I removed the service.