Windows XP Professional: The Missing Manual

Burning CDs from the Desktop

In the old days (two years ago), every PC came with a CD-ROM drive. Nowadays, most new PCs come with a CD burner, a drive that can record new CDs that contain your own stuff.

If your PC has such a drive—either a CD-R drive (CD recordable, which means you can record each disc only once) or a CD-RW drive (CD rewritable, for which you can buy CD-RW discs that you can erase and re-record as many times as you like), you’re in for a treat. For the first time, Windows XP lets you burn your own CDs full of files and folders without having to buy a program like Roxio’s Easy CD Creator ( http://www.roxio.com/en/products/ecdc ).

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONNothing to Lose

I’m burning a CD, and I get a message that I’m losing information. Why on earth would I want to click Yes?

When attempting to burn picture and music files onto a CD—not an uncommon task—you may be shown an error message that says, “This file has extra information attached to it that might be lost if you continue copying.”

Windows is pointing out that some of the many informational tidbits it stores for pictures and music files (pixel dimensions of pictures, band name for music files, and so on) won’t survive the transfer to a CD (whose more limited file format has only so much capacity for this kind of file trivia). This information won’t be “lost” from the originals on your hard drive, of course—just in the CD copies.

Your best bet is to turn on “Repeat my answer each time this occurs” and then click ...