Nero is still probably the most famous brand when it comes to burning data to disc even though there are other free disc burning software. Most people would remember that Nero started out as a great disc burning software but got bigger and bloated in every major update. This has caused many people to stay out of Nero or simply use unofficial stripped down “lite” or “micro” version of Nero without the unnecessary modules. Actually Nero still provides the good old Nero Burning ROM that comes only with the burning software without the extras.
Most of Nero products are shareware but they’ve always provided a free version of Nero for basic burning features which was called BurnLite. BurnLite is now called Nero Kwik Burn and it is an app for Nero Kwik Media which needs to be activated to enable the data burning and disc copying feature. If you don’t activate the Nero Kwik Burn app, the Nero Kwik Media is merely an all-in-one media management software to manage and view photos, videos and music. Activating the Nero Kwik Burn app may seemed a bit complicated and we’ll show you how to do it.
First you will need to download the Nero Kwik Media 12 installer which is 171MB in size. Yes the file size is huge and in fact it is even bigger than the Nero Burning ROM 12… The setup requires to install a few prerequisites such as Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 and Direct3D extensions. At the last step of installing the requirements on the reboot validator, you will be asked to install the Nero Ask Toolbar. Make sure you uncheck both checkboxes then only click the Next button. Your computer will need to restart and the installation will automatically run with Windows is booted up. After installation, running Nero Kwik Media 12 will show the Home screen that looks like the screenshot below.
You may have noticed from the image above that there are two buttons “Burn Data Disc” and “Copy Disc” at the Burn with the Best box. Clicking at either button will bring you Nero Kwik Market where you can download the Nero Kwik Burn app and enable it on your Nero Kwik Media program. Just click the Free download button and you will be asked to login or create a new account. After creating an account or login if you already have a Nero account, both Burn Data Disc and Copy Disc functions will be instantly enabled without downloading anything.
From our research and analysis, we found that a free serial number is added to your registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Nero\Shared\NL10 to enable the Nero Kwik Burn that allows Burn a data disc and Copy a disc.
If you find that it is a hassle to register a Nero account, simply download this registry file and run it in your computer to enable the Nero Kwik burn features.
The image below shows how the data burning interface looks like for Nero Kwik Burn 12 which is very similar to the previous version 11. You can drag and drop files to the interface or click the Add button to add files/folders that you want to burn.
If you’ve used the previous version of Nero Kwik Burn 11, you may have noticed that the “burn a music disc” option is missing. Burning an audio CD is still possible by clicking at Music at the left hand sidebar and then click on the Burn icon located at the bottom right which will bring up a window with 4 burn options.
The KwikMedia.exe process itself is pretty heavy, taking up over 100MB of memory usage when I was only clicking around the menus without even performing any CPU intensive task such as burning disc or playing video. For Nero fans, the new Kwik Media and Kwik Burn is free and runs on Windows XP/Vista/7 in 32-bit and also 64-bit in 32-bit emulation mode.