As you do, I would first suspect a heat problem and second suspect a 
weakened and/or overworked power supply.

As to heat, I'm sure you have checked to make sure all the fans, heat 
sinks and case filter, if equipped, are clean and functioning. I've read 
a few times that cases are designed for the most effective air flow so, 
other than service periods, I leave the case closed. I have installed a 
secondary slot fan blowing onto my video card, a fan blowing onto my 
hard drives, and an auxiliary case fan to exhaust heat and another 
auxiliary case fan to bring room air into the case. Fans are cheap 
compared to the damage that heat can cause. I also use round cables to 
limit blockage of air flow. Your idea of temporarily removing the case 
cover is OK for testing for overheating and you might want to have a 
house fan lightly blowing into the case during the testing.

If you have the test equipment to check the power supply, you should do 
the testing under operating conditions leading up to the shut down. OR 
you can temporarily disconnect some load (unplug one or two hard drives) 
and see if the shut down occurs while burning. If this resolves the 
problem, the power supply likely needs to be replaced. For your setup, I 
would consider no less than 400W and preferably 450W. If the problem 
continues, the burner likely needs to be replaced since, for some reason 
during burning, it appears to be drawing too much power (short?).

I hope this helps.

Tom Mayer

Andrew J. Rozsa wrote:
> I am running the following system:
>
> OS: Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 4 (build 2195)
> Processor: 2.40 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
> 8 kilobyte primary memory cache
> 512 kilobyte secondary memory cache
> Board: 865-Series
> Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
> BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG 06/18/2003
> Drives   Memory Modules c,d, e
> 260.03 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
> 120.66 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
> _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A [CD-ROM drive]
> Drives:
> c: (NTFS on drive 0) 120.02 GB 72.89 GB free
> d: (FAT32 on drive 1) 100.00 GB 8.63 GB free
> e: (NTFS on drive 2) 40.00 GB 39.13 GB free (SATA)
> BUS Adapters:
> HighPoint RCM Device
> RocketRAID 1520 S-ATA Controller
> Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller
> Standard Universal PCI to USB Host Controller (4x)
> Multimedia:
> RADEON 9600 SERIES [Display adapter]
> RADEON 9600 SERIES - Secondary [Display adapter]
> DELL 1905FP [Monitor] (19.3"vis, s/n T611656CACF6, June 2005)
> Creative SB Live! Basic (WDM)
>
> Whenever I try to burn a DVD (ISO, mp3 collection, etc) lately the 
> computer shuts down about half way through the job. It has also done 
> that several times when I was converting large video or audio files to 
> some other format.
>
> I saw some reference to issues relating to similar problems having to 
> with how a computer accesses the DVD burner. But, could it also be the 
> audio card not being sufficiently powerful? Drivers for all devices 
> are kept up-to-date. I do have a lot of stuff "attached" via USB hubs: 
> scanner, speakers, external drives (both USB and FireWire), 2 printers 
> (one on the parallel port) etc.
>
> Over the years, my experience with sudden shut-downs seemed to have 
> been related to over-heating issues. The CPU ALWAYS registers 103F, 
> even after the system has been shut down overnight. It is a little 
> crowded in the box, so maybe ventilation is not as efficient as it 
> should be, so I would consider switching to round cables.
>
> What would be the more logical (read: least expensive) way to go about 
> solving the problem? I thought of starting with taking the lid off the 
> box and keeping it off, although the added noise is a bit off-putting.
>
> I sure would appreciate help with this.
>
> Kind regards and a Happy, Joyous and Healthy New Year to all.
>
> Andrew
>            
>

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