I use Nero, always verify, and you should always be able to get a verified burn. If it fails, the disc has a problem. Things to try include different brand of media, CDRW rather than CDR (avoids wasting more CDS but also using CDRW media changes the read gain at boot time that can help bypass some read errors), and burning on a different system (although if you have to do this it may indicate a CD drive problem that is also affecting the boot process). Also be sure that you are using 700 meg media; yes we have had long posts from a user who finally acknowledged that they were trying to burn the CD to 650 meg media.