Dec 24

2007

Using Optical Media

Filed Under (Windows Xp) by Admin on 24-12-2007

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Optical Device Drives (ODD), commonly called CD/DVD drives, are well backed by Windows XP’s driver database. You shouldn’t find any difficulty in installing a drive. If you do encounter some sort of problem, you’ve either done something wrong or the device is faulty.

Hard disks and ODDs both have jumper settings for “Master,” “Slave,” and “Cable Select.” If you have your hard disk and CD/DVD drive on the same IDE cable and if both are set to Master, then you may have only one of the device functioning at a time—in most cases, the hard disk will function and the CD/DVD will go undetected. It is good practice to maintain ODD devices on the secondary cable (there are two IDE ports, Primary and Secondary). If you have a CD/DVD Writer, it is advisable to set it as the Secondary Master.

Windows XP comes with a CD-Writing Wizard. Although unimpressive, it can be useful to write data to CD when you do not have software to perform the task. Follow these steps to use the CD Writing Wizard:

  • Insert a blank CD into the drive. In the window that appears, select ‘Open writable CD folder’ and click ‘OK’. Alternatively, just double-click the CD/DVD icon in My Computer.
  • Copy the files you want to write into this folder; you will see that the folder has a heading “Files Ready to Be Written to the CD”. While adding files to this folder, make sure that you do not shoot over the capacity of the disk (700 MB). To add files to this folder, select the files (hold down [Ctrl] and use mouse clicks to select multiple files) you want to write to the CD and use [Ctrl] + [C] after selection to copy the selection. Come back to the CD folder and use [Ctrl] + [V] to paste the copied files/folders. This information is stored as a temporary list by Windows XP, and it uses the list to fetch the files while burning the CD.
  • Once you’re done copying files and folders to the CD folder, click on the item labeled ‘Write these files to the CD’ to initiate the Wizard. Type in a CD name and click ‘Next’. A progress window will open, showing the CD burning operation. Upon completion of the burn process, just click ‘Finish’ to close the wizard.

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