CD/DVD drive assignment
These fields allow the user to select the CD and DVD drives to be used for the CD/DVD test.
CD/DVD Selection
To edit the test preferences for a CD or DVD, select the Drive in the “CD/DVD Selection” List. Any changes you make in the “Edit details for drive: <drive name>” will be reflected in this list.
Adding a CD/DVD drive
To specify that an optical drive should be tested, select a “Test Mode” from the drop down list. Only those CD and DVD drives detected by the Windows operating system as displayed in the drop down list.
To remove an optical drive from the test, select a “Test Mode” of “NO TEST” from the drop down list.
Up to twenty drive letters can be selected for simultaneous testing. The CD burn test supports a maximum of 1 drive simultaneously The type of CD used in the actual test should match the setting in this window.
Test mode
Specifies the testing mode for the selected optical drive: NO TEST, Music CD playback, Data CD / DVD read and verify, PassMark Test CD / DVD, No CD in Drive and Burn CD-RW. See the CD Test description for more details about test modes.
Additional seeking and Seek count
For PassMark CD/DVD’s and Burn CD-RW only. When Additional seeking is selected, seeking to different positions on the CD/DVD or CD-RW will occur Seek Count number of times for each cycle of file read/verify.
Quick Erase and Full Erase
For Burn CD-RW only. Erase the CD-RW media. The quick option erases content type information in typically less than two minutes. The Full option additionally erases all user data on the disc, however this can take a considerable amount of time (over 1 hour) and the test cannot be cancelled during this stage.
650MB and 700MB
For Burn CD-RW only. CD-RWs are available in a number of sizes. The most common are 650Megabytes (MB) and 700MB of data. This option allow the user to specify whether the CD-RW to be tested is supports 650MB or 700MB.
Test data drive
For Burn CD-RW only. PassMark format Test CD data is temporarily created on a harddisk before burning this test data to the CD-RW. This test data is very large. By default, it will be created in the BurnInTest installation directory, and is deleted after the CD-RW burn test. The target drive for this test data may be changed from the “default installation directory” to the root directory of a hard disk on the system. This hard disk drive letter is specified from the drop down “Test data drive” list. The selected drive will be saved as user configuration after selecting “OK” (you do not need to add a CD drive to alter this drive configuration).
This option is provided for when BurnInTest is run from read-only media (CD/DVD’s), Floppy disks or other disks with insufficient space and where the hard disk that BurnInTest is installed is to be tested by the BurnInTest hard disk test (writing and reading a large temporary test file to a disk that is being tested with BurnInTest should be avoided).
Blocking auto play
When a CD or DVD is inserted into a drive, Windows will attempt to auto-play the disc. In Windows XP a window prompting the user to take some action is displayed even if the CD is just a data CD and can not be played. The behavior can be prevented by selecting the ‘block removable storage auto play’ option in the CD preferences window.
For this feature to work the following conditions must be meet.
- The main window of BurnInTest must be the active foreground window.
- Internet explorer version 4.0 or above must be installed.
- The auto-play feature must not already be disabled by some other means (e.g. changes to the registry)
Note: In some cases it is also possible to block the auto-play function by holding down the shift key when a disc is inserted. (This is a feature of Windows and not BurnInTest).
Using the Registry to Disable Auto Run / Auto play (Experts only)
There are two registry values that can be used to persistently disable Auto Run: NoDriveAutoRun and NoDriveTypeAutoRun. The first value disables Auto Run for specified drive letters and the second disables Auto Run for a class of drives. If either of these values is set to disable Auto Run for a particular device, it will be disabled.
Note The NoDriveAutoRun and NoDriveTypeAutoRun values should only be modified by system administrators to change the value for the entire system for testing or administrative purposes. Applications (such as BurnInTest) should not modify these values, as there is no way to reliably restore them to their original values.
The NoDriveAutoRun value disables Auto Run for specified drive letters. It is a REG_DWORD data value, found under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer key. The first bit of the value corresponds to A:, the second to B:, and so on. To disable Auto Run for one or more drive letters, set the corresponding bits. For example, to disable the A: and C: drives, set NoDriveAutoRun to 0x00000005.
The NoDriveTypeAutoRun value disables Auto Run for a class of drives. It is a REG_DWORD or 4-byte REG_BINARY data value, found under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer key. By setting the bits of this value's first byte, different drives can be excluded from working with Auto Run.
The following table gives the bits and bit mask constants that can be set in the first byte of NoDriveTypeAutoRun to disable Auto Run for a particular drive type. For Microsoft Windows 2000, you must restart Windows Explorer before the changes take effect.
Bit Number |
Bit mask Constant |
Description |
0x04 | DRIVE_REMOVEABLE | Disk can be removed from drive (such as a floppy disk). |
0x08 | DRIVE_FIXED | Disk cannot be removed from drive (a hard disk). |
0x10 | DRIVE_REMOTE | Network drive. |
0x20 | DRIVE_CDROM | CD-ROM drive. |
0x40 | DRIVE_RAMDISK | RAM disk. |