[Ellie23]

I've got a lovely pile of DVDs containing pictures. They were all burned on a computer running XP but Vista won't acknowledge that there's anything on the discs and wants to format them.

The drive seems to work fine, it will read commercial CDs and DVDs but won't let us access anything we've burned ourselves. It's a horrible feeling, to think that all these things are inaccessible.

Any ideas what we might be doing wrong? Or is it yet another 'something' peculiar about the way Vista does things?

[Ian]

Are you 100% sure that the disk were burned correctly in the first place? Also, what type of disks and drive are you using?

[Rush]

I agree with Ian, Formatting in this instance only refers to getting the discs prepared for "Action" , it looks like vista is saying the discs are free of data..

Before you do anything rash..take them to a friend running XP and see for yourself if the discs do in fact contain images.

[Ellie23]

They were all checked after they were burned and before the pictures were deleted from the drive. After that they worked alright on the XP computer, but I can't read anything on them now - and the only difference is that we're now using Vista, and that it's a new computer.

They are DVD-RW, not the most expensive.

I think the drive is ATAPI DVD A DH20A4P ATA Device? ( I really shouldn't ask questions like this, should I?) It works OK with everything else - games and so on, and I've installed software from discs. So the bits of wire must be in the right places.

[floppybootstomp]

It's probably a case of the drive in the new computer having trouble reading the DVDRW.

Can you still burn the pix to a better quality (branded) DVD-R? If so that may help.

If not, perhaps seek the aid of a friend or relative who can burn you a copy, assuming their computer can read the DVDRW.

The quality of optical drives varies greatly and if the computer you have was mass produced it's likely they've gone for a cheap drive.

[Ellie23]

Originally Posted by floppybootstomp

Can you still burn the pix to a better quality (branded) DVD-R? If so that may help.

It would be good if I could, but I can't open the discs so can't transfer them to anywhere else