Additional:

Tried at my customers pc. They had over 1000 files in My Documents. Moving to another folder sorted this. Pressing "Add' with 0 files in the My Documents Folder made the dialog box open INSTANTLY!

However, exiting and restarting Nero Express returned to same problem!!!

Here is the issue, Nero Express remembers the last folder visited whe adding files to the compilation. If the number of files in the folder is large (eg over 1000 files), it hangs when pressing "add".

So it wasn't the type of files, but the number of files in the directory that kills Nero Express. So the last folder visited before exiting Nero Express was the folder with the newly moved 1000 files, and so then Nero hangs again as usual. If I then move the files elsewhere Nero will work fine as the directory contains no (or few) files.

Therefore, if the last folder I visit is "My Computer", then it's safe and when I restart, no problems. I have to remember to browse to that location prior closing the dialog box and burning the cd.

Easy method to re-produce the error:
On a Windows 98SE machine browse to a folder with over 1000 files,
after all files to be burned to CD have been selected, while staying in that directory with the 1000 files, exit Nero Express. And then run Nero Express again. The first folder to be opened will be that folder with 1000 files and Nero Express will hang. Voila!

Easy software solution for Nero programmers:
Perhaps Ahead might consider hard-coding the default location that is opened when pressing "Add" in Nero Express staticly to "My Computer".
Instead of the last folder visited, it wil open the "My Computer" folder.
This would solve the issue in both 5.5 and 6.

(in reply to grol)

Grol,

Thanks for the post! Perhaps this can be very useful to Ahead. I am sure they will appreciate the detailed post.

(in reply to grol)

quote:

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Originally posted by grol

I have figured it all out now. I installed Nero 6 from my friends serial to test it - same problem!!!!

So I reinstalled 5.5 again and continued searching. Here is what I found. I found 1299 files in my My Documents folder that were of a .IDX extension. eg: CAD0.IDX and SA61.IDX all with sequential numeric file names.

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Those .IDX files are from Nero's Audio Database. Whenever you copy an Audio CD, drag CDA Files into Nero, or Extract Audio from a CD, we allow you to connect up to a free Database to download the Artist and title information. We give you an option to save this database information to your Hard Drive. You would need to create a folder to save this database too, and our software reserves a specific size and fills it with dumby IDX files. So as you download, the space used never grows larger than already reserved. And the dumby IDX files are replaced with actual data, etc.

Many times in the past, customers have saved this to their Desktop, and they would find they all of a sudden have over 1000 IDX files on their desktop. Normally, they would see only 20 to 30 at a time, and each time they manually highlighted the visible files and deleted, it would appear as if they refused to deleted, as those 20 to 30 would be immediately replaced with another 20 to 30. The only way to resolve would be to search for IDX files and delete all. Otherewise it could take all day selecting only 20 to 30 at a time and erasing.

Though I have never seen the symptoms you are seeing due to these files being on the desktop.

Regards,

Craig

(in reply to grol)

Yeah I figured that. However, it's not the type of files in the directory that kills it. My customer had about 1000 MS Word Documents in that folder. The very moment I moved them to another folder, Nero Express pressing "Add" instantly worked. I then browsed to new folder where I cut and pasted the Words docs, burned cd and exited.

The very next time I opened Nero Express, the default location to open when pressing "add" was the folder with the 1000 Word docs (last place visited), and Nero hung again. If the last place visited is "My Computer" then it's fine and a safe - but too much for a customer to remember to do.

That is why having a default location (just like Nero Burning Rom does) being the "My Computer" or the Desktop is a an easy fix.

This behaviour occured with both Nero Express 5.5 / 6, but neither Nero Burning Rom 5.5 / 6 because the default location is the beginning of the directory tree ("my computer").

(in reply to grol)

Just an update. Nero Express still working, just so long as I don't have more than a couple of hundred files in the last directory visited in the previous session. It must either be a "feature" of Windows 98SE or something to do with IE6sp1 on this OS. Anyways, I have sent this info to Matthias and Volker a while ago now, but no reply. I can only assume that the Nero Team have given up on this one. Needless to say, I am looking for alternative software for my customer.

(in reply to grol)

Grol, I can't test your theory, as I no longer have a Win98 Machine, but I can say, that on a WinXp machine, I tried your problem, and opened a directory with over 19,000 files, and there was not a problem.

(in reply to grol)