Advanced Tech Question - CD overburn

[SlavesandBulldozers]

I've been trying to burn a file onto my cd-rw and have not had any luck, it kept delivering a "file too big for cd" kind of thing. Now, I knew that the file would fit the CD, because it was an image that was designed to fit on a cd. The file recommended i use Nero for burning the image. So i went into a section of Nero that I can select "overburn", which warns "may damage CD" and "may damage Cd writer" and "use at own risk". You guessed it, i selected that little bad-boy option. Now guess what? My goddamn cdwriter won't work, but not only will it not write - the little fucker won't even read - it just green lights for 30 seconds any time i put anything in there. Boy did i feel like a complete jackass. Then i went looking on Nero's site and found that my cd-burner is "overburn capable", i'm taking this, perhaps erroneously, to mean that i didn't just completely f up my cd-burner. Is anyone experienced in overburning? My cd burner is still detected in device manager, and I've uninstalled the drivers via device manager and upon boot my computer redetects the cd-burner - so its really not an issue of cd-burner detection within windows - its more of an issue of a complete breakdown in the read-write process. I'm a tech and I'm destructive than any computer novice I've ever met, with my incessant toying and tweaking.

[MrSoundAndVision]

1. Here's what I would do

You're no novice, so don't be afraid of the command line. Download a program called 'cdrtools'. It's completely command line (but has a gui interface you can download separately). After you install this program, and try burning with it (you'll have to study the different command line options first), it should tell you in more detailed way what is wrong.

No experience with overburn here, just one recommendation, though a lengthy one.

[toddzilla]

2. not on RW

you can overburn on a cd-r quite easily, i've done 720 megs myself. cd-rw uses quite a bit of overhead to be able to re-write. i'd say either get a cdr, which are very cheap, or give up.

as far as messing up your drive.. i have no idea, i've pushed the limit but never had any problems with my lite-on 32x

[SlavesandBulldozers]

3. thanks for everybody's help

i opened my cpu and had to physically remove and reseat the cdrw from the power supply and the controller. now it's at least able to read. this is very strange, that the software control's control of the hardware in nero's overburn is able to do that to hardware. thank god it's not completely f'd, and thank you all for your help. Now I'm off to screw with it some more! I never learn my lessons.