Burn CD – Win XP

The term burning a CD definitely has an ominous tone to it. It can definitely make people nervous about the whole process, but it’s really not very different than moving files from a hard drive to a floppy disk. What probably makes people uneasy is the fact that if something goes wrong, you wind up making a “coaster”, a term that refers to the worth of a CD when a disc doesn’t get written properly. Yeah, about all you can do with a bad CD is a set your drink on it. Thankfully, the CD burning software that exists today keeps this to a minimum.

All of the software that we mentioned in the previous section basically works the same way. Some are easier to use than others, some have more features than others. All should make the process of burning a CD quite painless, unless of course you simply have a bad disc, which happens occasionally. All of the software titles should offer two ways of performing the steps to write a CD – a wizard mode and an advanced mode. The wizard mode will step you through the process by asking you what type of disc to create, ask you to pick the files to transfer to the CD, and provide a big red button to start the recording. The advanced mode is a way that experienced users can tweak all the settings by hand. Either way, you should end up with a readable CD and not a coaster.

The look and feel of different software can vary quite a bit, but a brief bit of orientation can usually get you started in a matter of minutes. Again, if you are new to this process, use the wizard or beginner mode and it will step you through it. This tutorial was made using an older version of Roxio’s Easy CD Creator;  the steps are similar with newer versions. We’ll step through the process of making a data CD of some Word documents.

	Step 1. Open the Project Selector program to reveal the Select a Project interface. Begin by selecting the type of CD you want to create. Most programs, including Roxio Easy CD Creator, will offer the choice of, Music CD, Data CD, Photo/Video CD, or CD Copy.
	Step 2. We’ll choose Data CD Project from the Make a Data CD option.
	Step 3. Next, we need to select the files to be included on the CD. Using the window provided, move to the folder where the Word document files are located.
	Step 4. Under the Edit menu choose Select All so that we select all the files in the folder.
	Step 5.With the files selected, click on the Add button.
	Step 6. The files will be added to the list of files to be written to the CD. Now press the Big Red Record Button .
	Step 7. You now click the Start Recording button. The default settings should be fine, but if you’re comfortable changing the options, click the Options button. Otherwise, go to Step 9.
	Step 8. Options – Here you can change the Record Options – Record CD; Test Only; Test and Record. You can also select a Track-at-Once or a Disk-at-Once CD as the Record Method.
	Step 9. The recording process will begin. When the disc creation is finished, you’ll be given the option to save your session, in case you want to make another recording of the same data. You can also close the program without saving your session.
	Step 10. You should now be able to open the CD on your computer and see the files in the window.