CD Burner XP 4.5 promises better drive support, performance

German developer Canneverbe Limited has announced the first stable release of popular Windows freeware disc-burning tool, CDBurnerXP 4.5.0.

Once the freeware burning tool of choice, the latest update of this powerful and versatile data, audio and video burning tool has one notable update to its data-burning component: it ditches the old Numedia Soft burning library in favor of the StarBurn library in a move designed to improve compatibility and stability.

The headline new feature in CDBurner XP 4.5.0 is the major update of the program’s data burning feature. By removing the Numedia Soft burning library, Cannerverbe claims the update should fix a number of major issues, including failing to detect devices on AHCI systems, 100 per cent CPU usage while burning, and missing files on UDF volumes. There’s also a beneficial side-effect in that the program should now start a little faster.

Version 4.5.0 also extends UDF support up to version 2.60, adds native support for FLAC files and promises more reliable audio burning among a host of other bug fixes. It also restores support for older Windows 2000 machines, which had been dropped in an earlier build.

The stable build appears after a number of months in beta, where a number of potentially major issues were flagged, but should have been fixed in this release. These include ignoring the selected writing speed when burning, so the maximum was always used, plus an inability to setting custom dates and times for files and folders in a disc compilation. UDF discs should now also been burned with publisher and application information included, while issues with verification not listing any failed files are also hopefully absent.

CDBurnerXP 4.5.0 is a freeware download for PCs running Windows 2000 or later. Note it is ad-supported, and will offer to install additional programs. These are not mandatory for the program to run.