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Why can Windows XP only read some of the CD-RW discs I burned with Nero and Roxio in Windows 98 SE several years ago?

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CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive/writer problem: Can't read CD-RW discs in Windows XP recorded in Windows 98 SE using Nero and Roxio

Several years ago, I burned many CD-RW discs using Nero and Roxio in a Windows 98 SE system. However, when I try to access them in Windows XP Home Edition, only some of them can be read.

Answer

If your old CD-RW discs were not 'closed' or 'finalised' (US: finalized) when written, a standard CD drive won't be able to read their contents. Nero and Roxio, and other CD/DVD-writing software, have options that allow a user to close or finalise a disc when it has run out of space, or the user doesn't want to write any more data to it.

Closing a CD or DVD writes the table of contents to the disc and allows the CD to be read on almost any other CD drive. If your CD-RW discs weren't closed, then they can only be read on a PC that has a CD/DVD writer.

Note that Windows XP can only be used to write/burn to recordable CD discs, not to recordable DVD discs. DVD-writing or Blu-ray disc-writing requires third-party software. Windows Vista and Windows 7 can write to DVD discs. Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista added support for writing Blu-ray discs (BD-R and BD-RE), but nothing more (no playback or movie-related features).

Windows 7 can play Blu-ray data discs, but, unfortunately, it cannot play Blu-ray movies, because it lacks the appropriate codecs. These codecs are not available for free, so you need third-party software such as Cyberlink's PowerDVD. If you are upgrading a computer from Windows Vista, it will probably have come with an installation file for some third-party DVD-playing software, which you should save to a CD/DVD before you perform a clean installation. If you perform an in-place upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7, your files should be left intact in their folders, but just in case something goes wrong, you should back them up to discs or an external hard disk drive. If you are upgrading from Windows XP, you have to perform a clean installation, because there is no in-place upgrade path to Windows 7 from Windows XP.

Of course, your CD-RW discs themselves may have gone bad. This can happen very easily when they've been written on with solvent-based inks, or have glue-on labels. Moreover, with CD-R and CD-RW discs that were created with the first CD writers, the latest CD and DVD drives can have problems reading the discs because they find that alignment of the tracks is not what they require. If that is the case, specialised hardware can find and read data that appears misaligned to modern CD/DVD drives, but, because it is expensive equipment, only data-recovery services use it.

If you have the original drive that they were written on, you should be able to read the discs if they haven't gone bad. Alternatively, try the discs you can't read on as many different CD/DVD writers as you can. A computer shop might allow you to try reading the discs on their demo PCs - under supervision. If nothing works, the only other alternative is to make use of an expensive, reputable data-recovery service. But if the discs have gone bad, your files are lost forever, because not even a data recovery service will be able to access them.