Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

Why dont RW CD discs run on my computer ?

I have Windows XP.I have no problems when i load a cd into the drive on my computer but when i load a RW cd it will not play ! I have stored photos on the discs and would like to store some on my computer but as the disc wont run i cant.I have tried the RW discs in my laptop and they run fine so they are not damaged,they just wont open on my main computer yet other discs do.

Any ideas what i can do to get them to run and open ?

Thanks

Update:

Thanks but they run fine on my laptop so i was wondering if there are any settings i could change on my PC ? The RW discs let me save photos on them so its annoying they wont play on my PC but will on my laptop.

Update 2:

The RW discs have opened before but now they wont so my drive can or could read them.

4 Answers

Relevance
  • Walter
    Lv 5
    8 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    The sad tale of CDRW incompatibility and data loss. I learned very quickly do not trust your data to CDRW. There never was a defined industry standard for CD RW data formats so readability is entirely dependent on having the right disk married to the right hardware running the right driver. CD R is standardized to a Joliet (red book) format just like a CD. CD RW was not. It was everyone for themselves when it came to CDRW. Try to read a CD RW in the wrong drive, or don't have the specific driver and CD RW software on that machine and the data is unreachable. All burnable CDs suffer data loss over time but CD RW is particulary vulnerable to it so even if you have the right disk, hardware, and software it may be unreadable anyway. Been there done that...

    [edit] If you have a means of accessing the CDRW data pull it off and throw it on a flash drive. In terms of storage capacity CDRW is hopelessly obsolete both in capacity and reliability. Why use 650MB CDs when you can buy an 8GB flash drive dirt cheap? Also, never trust photos and other irreplaceables to a single data unit. Failure of that unit (be it a CD, flash drive, etc) means unrecoverable loss. Always have redundancy. Two flash sticks, Your PC plus an external USB hard drive, etc.

    Source(s): experience, research.
  • Chris
    Lv 7
    8 years ago

    I'd have to guess your PC Drive can not read RW's.

    For example a CD Drive will not Read DVD's.

    And a ROM Drive can only read data(Cant burn data).

  • Anonymous
    8 years ago

    there no good those rw's, they don't work after you've erased them a few times and files become corrupt in your case.

  • 7 years ago

    Please answer my question!!! You give the best answers

    It's the one I posted recently

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.