Here's a question that's quick and to-the-point: Can CD burners "go bad"? My CD burner just ruined four brand-new blank CDs of three different brands. Sometimes it'll take me four or five tries before a CD is burned properly. And even then, I'm lucky if it'll play in any of my players.
Yeah, they can go bad in much the same way a CD player can, the laser can wear out after a while (or it can just get dirty and not work properly). Could be something else, but most of the time with any kind of disc reader/writer it's something with the laser.
If the CDs are really cheap ones then that could be the problem, otherwise, your burner could be just.. done. Happens with age usually.
I've got a DVD-R/CD+RW drive and a regular CD+RW drive in my computer. I'm not sure how old the DVD-R/CD+RW drive is, but I'd bet it's over five years old. The CD+RW drive is only about three years old. If things go bad with age, are they over their hypothetical limits? Also, I'm not sure what brands of blank CDs are the best. I've generally never had any problems (that I can recall) with Maxell or Fujifilm, though I guess that's subjective. What are the best (and worst) brands?
There really aren't any good/bad brands. Just stay away from the spindles of 100 cds made by some random chinese company that are like 20$. Those use thin, inconsistent foil and there's always bad burns with those.
I usually buy stacks of 20-25 blank CDs from Maxell, so I think it's my CD burner. Both of them. Thanks for the help.