Supporting Users and Troubleshooting a Windows® XP Operating System Exam Cram™ 2 (Exam 70-27)

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Managing and Troubleshooting Desktop Storage

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Supporting CD and DVD Playback and

Recording Devices

With Windows XP Professional, users can save information such as photos

and software to a compact disc (CD) without installing third-party software.

Because CD-recordable (CD-R) and CD-rewritable (CD-RW) drives have

become standard parts of the desktop architecture, desktop support techni-

cians need to understand their capabilities and limitations.

Writing Files and Folders to CD-R and CD-RW Media

To copy files or folders to a CD, follow these steps:

Insert a blank, writable CD into the CD recorder. (You need a blank,

writable CD and a CD drive [CD burner] that has the capability of

writing CDs.)

Open My Computer and then select the files and folders you want to

write to the CD.

In the My Computer task pane under File and Folder Tasks, click

Copy This File, Copy This Folder, or Copy the Selected Items.

In the Copy Items dialog box, click the CD recording drive and then

click Copy.

In My Computer, double-click the CD recording drive. Under CD

Writing Tasks, click Write These Files to the CD.

Standard CDs hold 650MB of information. High-density CDs hold at least 700MB

of information. You must have enough space on your hard drive to temporarily

hold the files you want to copy to the CD or the operation will fail. The local hard

drive serves as Windows XP’s temporary staging area for data being written to

recordable or rewritable CD media.

When you are writing files, to optimize your computer for optimal writing

speed, Microsoft recommends that you redirect the temporary files created

by the write process to another local drive or partition, as shown in

Figure 3.13.

When the process of copying is complete, the last page of the CD Writing

Wizard, shown in Figure 3.14, enables you to create another CD like the one

you just created.

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Figure 3.14 The CD Writing Wizard copying files to a CD.

To create multiple CDs with the same files, click Yes, Write These Files to

Another CD, and insert another blank, writable CD into the CD recording

drive.

To erase files from a CD, follow these steps:

1. Double-click the CD recording drive to display the content.

2. Under CD Writing Tasks, click Erase This CD-RW.

3. The CD Writing Wizard enables you to delete the content of the

CD-RW.

Figure 3.13 How to modify the location for temporary CD files.

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Many software programs like Roxio’s Direct CD and Copy-to-Disk use the

Universal Disk Format (UDF), which is a standard published by the Optical

Storage Technology Association (OSTA). Windows XP reads UDF versions

up to 2.01 using the

udfs.sys driver.

Windows XP writes data to CDs using the Joliet and International

Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9660 CD File System (CDFS) for-

mats. When Windows XP writes audio to CD, it uses the Red Book format.

UDF is a successor to the ISO 9660 CDFS.

Therefore, if you are using a CD-RW disk, you can erase files and append

files to a disk that already has files if the disk was originally formatted using

Windows XP. However, to modify existing CD-RW disks formatted with

UDFS, you need extra software.

Configuring CD-R/CD-RW Device Settings

You can limit a user’s ability to burn CDs using Windows Explorer.

By configuring the group policy value

User Configuration /Administrative

Templates/Windows Components/Windows Explorer/Remove CD Burning Features

, you

can prevent users from using the Windows Explorer CD burning features.

This setting does not prevent third-party CD burners.

If you are trying to troubleshoot reading and writing problems, you can stop

the drive from automatically ejecting the CD and you can change the speed

with which data is written to the drive. Each of these are hardware proper-

ties, shown in Figure 3.13.

Following is a list of other troubleshooting solutions:

1. Don’t interrupt the flow of data to the CD recorder.

2. When creating a CD, the CD recorder must receive a constant flow of

data from the hard disk. If the flow of data is interrupted, the CD con-

tinues to spin but the writing laser does not have any information to

copy onto the disc. When this happens, the writing process stops and

users end up with a useless CD. To maintain a constant flow of data,

heed these guidelines:

Erasing a CD-RW deletes all the files on the CD. You cannot specify individual

files. Not all CDs are erasable; a CD-R disc is not erasable.