I have been trying to burn cds lately but my programs keep freezing or saying that it can't read the disc. Usually it will begin to burn and on the first, or even the later tracks it will stop burning. I have gotten the message that there was an error on the output device. I hope there is some way to fix this without buying a new cd-rom drive because I don't have any money. Any ideas? And by the way, I have had these problems with Roxio, MusicMatch, Real Player and probably other ones....

It does indeed sound like your drive has gone bad. I think you have two choices at this point. 1) You could try cleaning your drive, as there is a small chance that this is what will fix it. A cleaning kit costs about $10 USD. Or 2) buy a new drive. They are available for under $20 USD from HERE.

This maybe a hardware problem as Albert has suggested, but i would like you to try something first.

You symptoms are pretty much identical to an issue i had when trying to burn media to CD's.

I just want to know if you are attemping to burn using the same make discs? eg, you bought a spindle of 25 Sony CD-R discs and you are using them but you cant burn anything past a couple of tracks.

Sounds very strange, but it may actually be the disc and CD drive dont quite get on.

I have a Sony laptop that for some unknown reason will not burn a music CD past track 3 or 4 when using ones made by Memorex. I originally thought it was a hardware issue, as the first couple of burns i did on the discs were completed fine. But then i started to recieve the problems you are having. The only reason i found out it was something with the discs was when i tried to copy using a different branded one, which worked out fine. Tried again with Memorex and i got the error again.

I actually gave the remaining 14 or so blank CD's (id used about 9 trying to copy, but they were wasted through the error issue,they are CD-R which i use) to a friend who found that they worked fine when copying from there PC, Strange eh!

Every other make of CD since has burned fine, except for the Memorex ones.

So i suggest, if you have not already, to try and burn using a different brand of CD and see what happens.

Well no it's not the cd type. Thanks for your suggestions guys. Now I'm getting a message that says "There is no available cd recorder" or something like that, now the damn program is not responding.

Turns out somehow another cd-rw drive was installed recently and was enabled at the same time. I disabled the new drive (or is it a driver), and then it worked. It's probably temporary though but at least I was able to burn my badass Memphis Rap compilation CD!!!