Can't read CD

[Suzanne Healy]

I recently upgraded to Win XP, and now cannot read any of
the CD's that I created prior to the upgrade. I know
there is data on them, however, neither of my CD drives
will recognize it. When the CD is inserted, it appears to
be a blank disc. They were created using HP CD writer. I
think it may have been a Roxio product. Any help would be
appreciated!

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

If the CDs were created by dragging and dropping files to disk or saving
directly to disk this is known as packet writing and XP does not support
that function natively. This requires third party software such as the
Direct CD component of Easy CD
Creator, www.roxio.com or the InCD component of Nero, www.nero.com. While
XP does have the ability to read packet written CDs, on many systems, it
does not work so the third party software must be installed. Also note, the
software you used previously was likely a version not compatible with XP and
trying to install it to overcome this issue will cause problems on your
setup so check the web sites for version compatibility with XP as well as
compatible
CD-Writers.