Burn error 4261 - solved! (?)

Question

Hello All-
I feel your pain. I have been working on this for a week. I got it working tonight. I believe the key was updating the firmware for the burner. I have a dell xps400 and found an update r143730 for the hl-dt-st dvd+-rw gsa-h21n drive on the dell website. I had to download it, extract it, then 'flash' the firmware. It was tricky to find..I had to go to drivers/downloads, enter my service tag, and look carefully for a download that had a slightly differently named device, but appeared to be the right one. I'm now burning.
Not following a very good scientific process, here were the other changes I made...It's possible one of these or some combo did the trick:
-new discs
-slow burn speed to 16x
-used a totally new disc that I had never failed to write on.
-enabled DLA in properties of the drive.
-updated some sonic software from some clicks off the drive properties near where I enabled DLA.
-tried to burn through media player.
Hope this helps.

Answer 1

I got an Error 4261 message on my computer some months ago while attempting to backup my iTunes music ---about Dec. 2006. Hopefully, the problem is now solved. This was a difficult and time consuming issue to resolve. I shall provide some details of this resolution (worked for me) as I know some others are having the same problem. I hope to post this message to others with 4261 errors.
I have a Dimension E510 computer bought in 2006. I am using Windows XP. My CD ROM burner is as follows: HL-DT-ST DVD +-RW GWA4164B. I wonder if you have the same type CD ROM.
At first, several thoughts came to mind. Google? Never listen to music again. Invest in a sledge hammer? I decided to try and fix the problem and would work on this for the next eight months. Recently, I decided that this problem had to go away. I tried various things to correct the problem often with technical assistance as the following indicate:
Changed copy speed//Did a restore on my computer (no help)// reversed restore
Updated iTunes files//Did virus scans
Contacted a company techie—Discovered my warranty was still good. Cdrom driver was updated. We got the iTunes program to copy a disk. Problem solved?? Time passes.
The problem reoccurs. I contacted a techie again. He was able to get another program to copy on the cdrom I was using to copy iTunes music. I was told that I should contact an iTunes rep. $$. Says cdrom hardware is OK. (One can save files (ex. photos) to a new file created on the desk top and copy them to a cdrom---a test method used.)
I read suggestions about updating my BIOS and chipset on the iTunes message board. Not being a techie I wasn’t so sure about this. (Also Techies did not go in this direction.) Time passes.
I didn’t buy music.
I read messages saying that I should backup my iTunes music.
Called techie again. Updated cdrom driver. We were able to copy data using the same cdrom used for the iTunes copy. (Again this was not a fix. It was indicative of an intermittent/partial cdrom failure which occurred over time, and one manifesting itself in iTunes.) I asked him to try to copy another. Amazingly, this copy failed. Something was wrong. Now we’re getting somewhere. Techie eliminated some startup files to try to determine source of a software error, if one. This did not fix the problem.
Techie deleted a couple registry files. I don’t like deleting registry files because they serve a valuable purpose, but I’m not a techie. Later I was told that this is a routine test procedure. (After the fix I would have to do an update of my iTunes program. iTunes has a repair feature which was on my desktop—a holdover from a previous attempt to fix things with an iTunes update. I ran this repair without harming my music files, and this repaired the program.)
Techie said I may have a problem with my current brands of CD-R disks. I bought and tried other brands---four all total. This did not work.
I happened to attempt to copy some pictures as I was interested in having some developed. To my surprise, my computer stopped the copy citing an error with the copy process. The problem now manifested itself with another software program. Heretofore, I could successfully copy pictures using the same cdrom but not iTunes music.
I called the techie again. I told him what I had done and new error in copying other files to the cdrom. We attempted to use other programs to copy music and picture files on the cdrom. (My thinking is, if they had worked, then the cdrom was OK, and the problem was a software problem and likely involving iTunes---software and not hardware Obviously I wanted a cdrom replacement as this would be easier for me than pursuing imbedded software program issues.) We could not get any software programs to copy files to the cdrom in question. This was a clear indication that the cdrom was defective. We likely used up ten CD-R disks in these latest attempts.
Looking back, there was a subtle indication of a problem with the cdrom. There was a problem with one of the songs I had copied to a new disk (No. 24 of 24 songs on a disk). The song was copied with errors. This shouldn’t have happened.
The company replaced cdrom free of charge the next morning in about 5 minutes. Wow!
I tried the new cdrom and began burning iTunes music right away. No 4261 error message. I also copied pictures to the same cdrom without any error messages. I also successfully used other brands of CD-R disks.
I had problems with iTunes and a photo program after cdrom installation but fixed them with updates. I also experienced problems with Windows Media Player and Roxio/Sonic. They didn’t want to recognize the new cdrom in drive (E:). Restore made things worst so I undid this. I spoke to a tech again about these issues as I wasn’t certain of the scope/nature of problem. Issue of ownership of problem came up again. Software vs hardware. We updated both programs with updates from company support pages. This fixed the problem. Point learned here was the need to keep files updated with the latest and greatest. I am skeptical of too many changes because of risk of problems. Now, it seems, I have no choice but to do this---critical changes at least. Many thanks to Techie.
The thought in my mind now is whether performing updates and specifically on Windows Media Player would have fixed the error to begin with. Well, I did run an update on my iTunes prior to, and there are no updates for my photo program. Looking back I would try the updates/repair first (the easy stuff) before I replaced the cdrom. I spent about 9 hours on phone with techies(caution not to delete music). Without warranty, I couldn’t have afforded this. Luckily for me it was a hardware issue.
Replacing the cdrom on my computer fixed the 4261 error on my computer. I hope something here will be of help to some of you who have the same problem.
Kindest regards. 08/14/07