B 770 / 1 Make CD Burning a Breeze with Windows XP's Built-in Tools If your PC is equipped with a rewritable CD drive you ve almost certainly got some specialised software for copying files to CDs. If you haven t, or you find that software a little tricky to master, don t worry! As long as you use Windows XP, you have everything you need to create your own CDs with the minimum of fuss and bother. Read on to discover how to use this handy built-in XP feature. By Rob Young Getting Started: The First Steps to Burning Your Own CD... Tell Windows Which Files to Add to Your CD... CD Burning Troubleshooting! Here are a Few Burning Tips and Tricks... The Final Step: How To Complete the CD Burning Process... Windows XP B 770 / 4 B 770 / 5 B 770 / 7 B 770 / 9 This article shows you how to:... Create your own CDs using Windows XP s built-in CD-burning features... Erase a CD-RW disk in two quick steps ready for re-use... Add more files to a CD to avoid wasting space on the disk 37
B 770 / 2 XP s CD-burning tools are fairly limited DVDs cannot be used All the basics are covered The Pros and Cons of Windows XP s CD Burning Features Before we look at how to create your own CDs in Windows XP, I should quickly point out what you can and can t do with this CD burning feature. Like all the different tools included with Windows, it covers the basics but doesn t go much further. (Microsoft has to be careful not to step on the toes of companies who specialise in selling CDburning software if XP could do everything we ever wanted, the other companies would be out of business in no time!) What you get in Windows XP are very few options about how your CD is created: this makes CD creation very straightforward, because you don t have to worry about choosing the wrong options if there are no options to choose, but it does give you less flexibility. Also, Windows XP can t copy files to DVD disks: you re limited to using CD-R and CD- RW disks only. If you want to copy files to a DVD you ll have to fire up the specialised software included with your DVD drive and use that to create the disk. Those are the limitations, but it s not all bad news. XP s CD-burning features have the following points in their favour: They are comparatively easy to use, as I ve mentioned You can use either CD-R or CD-RW disks You can erase CD-RW disks to re-use them Along with data disks you can create audio CDs to play in an ordinary CD player 38
B 770 / 3 Multisession CDs are supported (which I ll explain later in this article) What s this word burning all about then? It stems from the fact that CD drives use a laser to record data on to a disk by burning little marks into the disk itself. When data is being written or stored on to a CD people say it s being burnt on to the disk. CD-R or CD-RW Disks: How To Choose Which is Best for You Just to ensure we cover all bases before we get down to the nitty-gritty, let s quickly run through the difference between the two types of disk you can use: CD-R and CD-RW disks. CD-R: This is short for CD-Recordable, and it s the slightly cheaper of the two types of disk (although neither is expensive). A CD-R allows you to store data on a disk just once: you can t erase the disk and re-use it. If you decide you no longer need the files you put on that disk, you have to throw it away. However, a CD-R disk containing music can be played in almost any type of CD player, including most car and home-stereo players. CD-RW: This is short for CD-Rewritable. You can erase this disk to remove all the files on it and re-use it if you want to. This makes CD- RW disks ideal for keeping backups of your important files: when your backups are getting out-of-date, just erase the disk and copy the latest versions of your files to it. A CD-RW disk containing music is less likely to be playable in a home or car CD player. The upshot of this is that a CD-RW disk is probably the best choice for almost any use Use CD-R disks for audio CDs or for sharing files with others CD-RW disks are good for most types of computer use, but not audio CDs 39
B 770 / 4 apart from creating audio CDs. If you want to create an audio CD, use a CD-R unless you know that the CD player you ll be using to listen to the disk does support CD-RW disks. If you re putting together a disk to send to someone else (whether it s a disk of music or data files), a CD-R disk is also the better choice: there s a chance that your friend s CD drive wouldn t be able to read a CD-RW disk you sent, whereas a CD-R disk should be fine. Getting Started: The First Steps to Burning Your Own CD There are several different ways you can start, but I m going to suggest you begin in what seems like a logical way by inserting a blank CD: 1. Insert your blank CD into your computer s rewritable CD drive. 2. When you do this, the drive will whir for a few moments and then you ll probably see the dialog pictured in the next screenshot. If so, select the option labelled Open writable CD folder using Windows Explorer and click the OK button. Select Open writable CD folder using Windows Explorer Click OK 3. You should now see a window similar to the one in the next screenshot. Assuming the CD 40
B 770 / 5 you inserted was a blank one, the white section of this window will be empty. If you inserted a disk that already contains some files, you ll see icons for those in that white area beneath a heading that says Files Currently on the CD. If you don t see the window or dialog pictured in the two previous screenshots, don t worry. Open the My Computer icon on your Start menu or desktop and among the icons you see in that window will be one for your CD drive (looking like the icon in the margin, although the H in brackets may well be a different letter on your system). Double-click this icon and you ll be seeing the window pictured in the previous screenshot. All the while this window remains open, you ll be able to see a button for it on the taskbar. If you minimise this window or it becomes hidden by others, you can get back to it easily by clicking that taskbar button. Like the icon pictured above, the button will have a picture of a CD on it and the text CD Drive followed by a letter in brackets. Tell Windows Which Files to Add to Your CD The next step is to tell Windows which files and folders you want to copy to your CD. For this you use the Windows Explorer program included with Windows, and this requires a little familiarity with two things: the Windows Explorer program You can open the CD Drive window from My Computer Use Windows Explorer to select the files to add 41
B 770 / 6 Right-click the required file or folder itself and the way files and folders are organised on your hard disk. If you re unsure about either of these, it s worth reading article O660 Organise Your Files with Windows Explorer, which you ll find in your PC Knowledge for Seniors main manual. Let s take a look at how to add some items to the CD: 1. Start Windows Explorer, which you ll find on your Start menu in the Accessories section. 2. When Windows Explorer appears, it will initially be showing you the contents of your My Documents folder. This is ideal if you want to copy some of the files in that folder to the CD. If you want to copy files from elsewhere, use the icons at the left to navigate into your hard disk s contents (by choosing My Computer followed by the drive named C:) and find a file or folder you want to copy to the CD. 3. When you find a file or a folder you want to copy to the CD, right-click it. On the menu that appears, move the mouse down to Send To, which makes another menu appear alongside it. On this menu, click the item that says CD Drive, as shown in the next screenshot. (On your system this item may say CD-RW Drive Move to Send To Click on CD Drive 42
B 770 / 7 or DVD/CD Drive, but it should be easy to recognise.) 4. If you like, you can switch back to the CD Drive window we opened in the previous set of steps. You ll see that it now contains a bold heading, Files Ready to Be Written to the CD, and below that you ll see the items you ve chosen to add to the CD so far. 5. In Windows Explorer, follow step 3 as often as you like to find other files and/or folders you want to copy to the CD in the same way. Each file or folder you select in this way will be added to the CD Drive window, gradually building a list of all the items you want on your CD. If you re planning to make an audio CD that you can play in a home stereo or a car CD player, don t add folders to the CD. Instead just add audio files. CD Burning Troubleshooting! Here are a Few Burning Tips and Tricks It s important to bear in mind that what you re doing at the moment is creating a list of the files and folders you want to put on your CD. Nothing has actually been copied to the CD yet. As a result, it s not too late to change your mind or correct mistakes. Let s run through a few things you might want to do: 43
B 770 / 8 You can easily remove some or all items from the list Check whether the files will all fit on the CD If you ve added a file to the list by accident (or changed your mind about adding something you chose earlier), switch to the CD Drive window where you can see the icons for the files waiting to be written to the CD. Next, select the file or folder you ve changed your mind about, and press the Delete key to remove it. If you decide you don t want to include any of the files you ve chosen, but want to make a fresh start instead, click the blue text at the left of the CD Drive window that says Delete temporary files and then click Yes when asked if you re sure. Windows remembers which files you ve lined up for copying to the CD, even if you close the CD Drive window or shutdown your PC. To see that window again at any time, just return to My Computer and double-click the CD Drive icon as mentioned earlier in this article. If Windows displays a message telling you that a file has extra information attached to it which might be lost if you continue copying, don t worry about this: click Yes to allow the file to be added to the list. A CD can hold only a finite amount of data (generally 650 or 700 MB, which will be shown on the disk itself). Unfortunately, Windows won t tell you if you re trying to squeeze too much data on to the disk. In fact, it will cheerfully let you keep adding more and more files to the list regardless of whether or not they ll all fit on the disk. To find out whether you re trying to put more on the disk than it can hold, switch to the CD Drive window and choose Edit > Select All then choose File > Properties. A dialog will 44
B 770 / 9 appear like the one pictured in the next screenshot, showing the total amount of data you re trying to put on the CD. (In the screenshot, for instance, you can see that I ve got 769 MB of files ready to be copied to the CD, and this won t work because the CD only holds 700 MB.) If you ve chosen too much to copy to the CD, delete some of the items from the window that you can bear not to have on your CD, then do the same check again to see what the new size is. Compare the size (in MB) with the capacity of your CD If you re creating an audio CD you can t go by the size of the files: what counts is the total length of all the music. A CD can generally hold 80 minutes of music (which, again, should be indicated on the disk itself). It s not as easy to find out whether you ve overrun on your 80 minutes, so the best thing is to add the tracks you want, taking something of a guess as to what they all add up to, and see what happens when you take the next step to actually create the disk. How To Complete the CD Burning Process Once you ve added all the files and folders you want to include on your CD, and you can see icons for them all in the CD Drive window, you re on the home straight. Follow the steps on the next page to finish the job by burning those files on to the CD: 45
B 770 / 10 The disk s name appears in place of CD Drive throughout Windows 1. Switch to the CD Drive window. 2. In the blue CD Writing Tasks section at the left, click on Write these files to CD. (If you can t see that blue section, open the File menu and you ll find the same item there.) During this process, Windows may tell you that the files you ve chosen won t all fit on the CD. If so, you ll have to cancel the CD Writing Wizard and delete one or two items from your list of files, as described in the Tips and Troubleshooting topic a little earlier in this article, and then try writing the files to the CD again. Remember, once you ve created this CD, you can always create a second one to hold the extra files that wouldn t fit on the first. 3. After a second or two you ll see the CD Writing Wizard dialog pictured in the screenshot on the next page, which walks you through the 2-step process. The first step is to type a name for your CD as shown in the screenshot. Windows suggests naming it after today s date, and that s fine the name doesn t matter much at all. However, if you want to type your own choice of name, it can contain up to 16 characters. What the name does is to replace the words CD Drive in My Computer and elsewhere with the name you chose whenever this particular disk is inserted everywhere you ve been seeing the name CD Drive while working through this article, you ll see this name instead while your new CD is in the drive. 4. Make sure there s a tick in the box marked Close the wizard after the files have been written, then click the Next button to move to the next step. 46
B 770 / 11 Type a name for your CD Make sure this box is ticked Click Next 5. If the files you added to the CD were audio files, you ll see an extra step at this point. Windows will notice that you re adding audio files and will display the step pictured in the next dialog. This asks whether you want to create an audio CD (one that s suitable for playing in home stereos and car CD players). If you do, be sure to select that option before clicking Next and moving to the final step. An extra step is shown for audio CDs Choose whether or not to make an audio CD Click Next 47
B 770 / 12 6. The next step doesn t actually involve you at all: the dialog will show you its progress in copying your files to the CD, and you just wait for it to finish. 7. When the files have been copied, the dialog will disappear, Windows will eject your finished CD, and you re done! If you want to test your completed CD, just close the drive tray again with the disk still inserted. After a few seconds, Windows will open the CD Drive window to show the files currently on the CD, unless you created an audio CD, in which case the Windows Media Player program should open and begin playing your audio tracks. How To Erase a CD-RW Disk and Use it Again and Again! One of the benefits of using CD-RW disks is that at any time you can erase them, removing all the files they contain, effectively giving yourself a fresh blank disk you can use again. If you ve used a CD-RW disk and you want to erase it, just follow these steps: 1. Insert the CD-RW into your computer s rewritable CD drive. 2. After a few seconds you should see a window like the one in the screenshot on the next page, showing the files currently on the CD. (If you don t see this window, open My Computer and double-click the icon for your CD drive, which will now have the name you chose for the CD you ve just inserted.) 3. In the panel on the left, click the text that says Erase this CD-RW. (If you don t see that 48
B 770 / 13 panel, you can open the File menu to find the same item.) Click on Erase this CD-RW 4. The familiar CD Writing Wizard dialog will open asking if you re sure you want to erase the disk. If you really are sure, click the Next button. (If you don t want to erase the CD, click Cancel and the dialog will disappear.) 5. Assuming you clicked Next, Windows will erase the CD, showing its progress in doing so, and then the Wizard dialog will disappear and you can start adding files to your newlyblank CD-RW. Avoid Waste by Making Sure You're Using All of the CD's Space I mentioned at the beginning of this article that Windows XP supports multisession disks. What this means is that you can keep adding more files to a CD until it s full. (This applies to both CD-R and CD-RW disks.) This helpful feature means you can avoid wasting disks. If you only copied a few files to your blank CD, it probably still has lots of space available on it and you can use that space to add more files at a later time. Click Next if you want to erase the disk 49
B 770 / 14 Adding extra files is just like starting with a blank CD Trying to replace files on a CD wastes space by keeping (but hiding) the old versions Adding files to a CD is hardly any different from the process of starting with a blank CD. I said earlier that if you insert a CD which already contains some files you ll see those files listed below a bold heading that reads Files Currently on the CD. You can follow exactly the same steps as before to list the additional files you want on the CD. As you do so, you ll see that the files in the window are grouped into two lists: one still showing the files currently on the CD, and one showing the new files waiting to be written to the CD. Exactly as before, when you ve finished specifying the extra files you want to add, click on Write these files to CD to update your CD. There are just two little warnings I should make you aware of when using this multisession option: If you copy a file to the CD and the CD already contains a file with that name, the new file will replace the old one: you ll no longer be able to access the old copy of the file on the CD. Despite the first warning above, the old file is still on the disk and using up space it s just hidden. In other words, if your disk originally contained 50 files and you copy new versions of the same 50 files to the disk later on, you ll only see 50 files on the disk. However, the old files will still be there, hidden, and occupying space on the disk. For this reason, if you re intending to replace old files on a CD with newer versions, it s best to use a CD-RW disk and erase it to get rid of the old files before adding the new ones. 50