I am having a similar problem.  I recently installed PE v 9 on my Windows 7 computer and have struggled to write a DVD.  My project consists of three avi files to be accessed via the DVD menu.  Everything seemed fine up until I tried to write the DVD.  The program went through the encoding process, but at some point ejected the blank DVD with no message of any kind.  Later the error "operating system error: number = 0x00000020-The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process" appeared.  At this point, when I went back to preview my menu, it had been screwed up with my still background that I had substituted gone and both my labeled buttons and the original template buttons scrambled together.

I then reconstructed my menu and tried to write again.  This time I did not get the error, but the DVD ejected before the progress bar indicated that the burning was finished.  I reinserted the disk and the program indicated right away that burning was complete.  Upon testing the DVD, I found that it worked OK, but my still background was gone and the gray background of the Faux Widescreen template was back.  It had saved my button changes, so the DVD was at least usable.

I am able to write the same project to a DVD on another computer using PE v 7 with some success (a different set of problems I won't go into here).

Right click the drive letter and select Properties... the "Allow files..." block at the bottom should be UN-checked so indexing is off

Yep... one picture is worth a lot of words

I had never used the camera icon before, so was pleased that it has a "browse my computer" (not the actual option words) feature that let me navigate to the jpg that I quickly made on my hard drive... one feature of this forum software that actually works!

I turned off indexing for the folder that contains my video files.  I downloaded the utility found by OldTrucker049, but lost the nerve to run it after reading some cautionary tales about the company's software on the web.

I tried writing another DVD and got the same behavior as my most recent try.  I did NOT get the 0x00000020 error.  PE 9 went through the encoding phase, then Compiling Media appeared in the Tasks Panel with the progress bar showing immediately 95% complete, but was stuck there for some time.  After two or three minutes the DVD drive began whirring.  After several minutes the Compiling Media progress bar moved up to 96%, but about then the disk ejected.  Examination of the surface showed that it had been written on.  I reinserted the disk.  Shortly after the Tasks Panel indicated that the writing was complete.

I played the DVD successfully with Windows Media Player and it seemed to be fine, except that the background still image that I had used in the menu was gone.

When I went back to Disc Menus in the Tasks Panels, the menu page had my still image (file name KC_andMe.jpg), but when I clicked on Preview, the still image was not present and the buttons were a scrambled mixture of the my edited buttons and the original template buttons.  Images of what I saw are below.

So there are two possibly related problems - PE v9 is not showing correctly what is actually happening (stuck in Compiling Media progress bar when it is actually writing to the disk) and it is rejecting my still image and scrambling the menu I made.

Menu in the Monitor Panel as I want it to be.

Menu as it appears in the Preview window after I write the DVD.

Thanks for pointing me to the other threads on this topic.  I tried the expedient suggested by one user of putting an audio file in the menu.  When I did that my custom background image was retained when the DVD was written.  The progress bars stilled "lied" about what was actually happening, but at least I got the DVD I wanted.

Does Adobe have a piece of software that allows you to reach into your monitor and kiss someone?

Cause that wonderful bit of advice you gave about turning off the drive indexing just solved a very frustrating problem that i've been experiencing!

Thankyou Bill!

Why does turning off indexing work? I am doing so at the moment as I am getting the same error message in Encore 5.1

Well turning off the indexing worked for me but I had a very odd glitch in the transcoding that threw off two videos on the dvd i made.

It seemed to just tweak for a second, then the rest of the video was all off sync and the next one that burned was off as well. what causes that to happen? The videos themselves, when played on the pc, are just fine and in sync.

Just curious. I don't do anything on my pc while it's transcoding either- I turn as much off as I can and shut off some of the processes as well.

So I am curious why I get that sometimes. It's not all the time mind you...