Windows XP SP3

Hello, I am trying to understand your problem . You are saying that you are trying to burn files to a writable CD and the XP won't let you do it? Have you simply tried to drag and drop files to the CD Rom? Do you receive any error messages?

You cannot simply copy and save files in a disc like you can with a USB thumb drive.

You need to copy and burn them in the disc.

If you need a disc burning program, Ashampoo Burning Studio Free is what I recommend and use.

It gives you a lot more options than what the built-in Windows burning ability does.

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Yes you can simply drop and burn in XP without any burn software. Put a disc into the writer rom and drop any file onto the ROM in My Computer. You will get an icon in the Systray that says; You have files waiting to be copied" (to that effect) and you simply click on the drive and choose burn. In other words, you can drop and drag any file to a ROM supported drive (it has to be a writer) as you could with a Flash drive.

I understand what you are saying, Emtronics, but your wording is a little confusing. "ROM" means Read Only Memory; the CD drive needs to be a writer (or Recorder), as you say, but the terminology is usually CD-R or CD-RW, not CD-ROM.

Also, after you "copy" files to the Windows Explorer window for the CD I think the message is more like "files waiting to be burned."

Finally, there is a way to treat a CD as a flash drive, but with XP you need special software. Way back I had Roxio, and I think their name for the feature was DirectCD. The capability also goes by another name, but I cannot remember it.

ok CD ROM DRIVE It has been awhile since I played with XP as it is an out dated OS. You are using semantics in my terminology. But I do know this, other than XP itself, you needed nothing to write data files, pictures, or even music files to a regular writeable CD. It was as simple as copy/paste or drag/drop. I stand by that.

After copy/paste or drag/drop you still had to "burn" the files to the regular writeable CD. Yes, with XP you needed no additional software to do so.

To use a CD the same way as a flash drive (e.g., to read and write files in some application other than Windows Explorer) you needed special software and a specially formatted CD-RW (or maybe CD-R).

Emtronics - Yes, it won't let me copy my files to a writable cd which I have been doing for years. The files that I want to copy goes to an area and the message comes up "You have files waiting to be written to the cd. When I insert my cd I get a blue screen with this message "Media Detection in Progress, please wait". At about the same time at the bottom I get this message "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library.
When I try to drag and drop I get this error "Windows encountered a problem when trying to copy this file. What do you want Windows to do? Retry or Cancel." Cancel is the only thing that works. I have tried using new cds and different files. Nothing works.

OK, so we both had the wrong word (copied or burned)--it's "waiting to be written."

It kinda sounds to me like a defective CD drive, but I have very little experience in this area.

I can put in a music cd and it plays fine. I can also put in a cd that was written several months ago and it will open and bring up everything that was written to the cd.

It sounds to me that possibly it can read cds/ dvds whatever the case may be but wont burn them for whatever reason. the laser might be dirty or worn out. getting a new cd drive shouldnt be all that expensive.

It doesn't recognize that I want to write to a cd. It thinks I want to use the Media Player. It appears to go directly to the Media program. Does anyone know that this means "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library"?

To me it sounds like your CD Drive may be going so i would replace it & the problem should go away.