CD Writing Strange Happenings!!

Hi

Strange thing going on with my laptop. It's a Dell 550, XP SP2 good spec with DVD/CD RW drive. I can send files to the CD no problem but I can't view them on ANY machine afterwards, including my laptop. I can see the file icon but the message I get when I try to open it is
"The document name or path is not valid. Try these suggestions. *Check the file permissions for the document or drive. * Use the file open dialogue box to locate the document." I have checked these but all looks fine. I know the document is not corrupted cos I can open it on the laptop, just not from the CD.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks

Hi there. Since you say "send" the files to CD, am I right in thinking you're using an RW disk like a giant floppy and just copying files rather than burning with Nero or whatever? If so, is it just the one disk or any disk you try? RW disks aren't very reliable in this way, so if it's the one disk, maybe it's just died.

If the scenario is different, please give some more detail of how you are doing it, what disks etc.

Hi
No it's any disk I use. I right click, then send to CD option. I'm wondering if it's the drive itself which is faulty.

Will a music cd play in it?

Haven't got one to try. It's totally weird. I put a cd in I've just burnt - I can see all the file icons. I take it out and re-insert it and it tells me the disk is empty!

If you are using Windows XP built in burning support by right clicking on files and sending to CD that just creates temporary files until they are actually burned.

Before you eject the disk either check your taskbar by the clock for a notification stating something like "you have files to be written to CD" or open my computer and double click on your CD-Writer Drive and make sure the files are there. If they are faded out then they are not written and there should be a link to write files to CD on the left hand side of the explorer window. Unfortunately I have the full version of Roxio on my computer and "Drag to Disk" takes over and I cannot re-create the scenerio to get screen shots to show you. Students do this all the time at the school I work for. They get to school and the CD is blank.

No it definately does write OK sometimes and I can view the files - sometimes! Then when I next try to look at the disk, it tells me it is blank. It's too weird!

The document name or path is not valid.........suggests that you might be creating shortcuts. What happens if you use burning software to list the files you want on the disk first ?

Same thing! If I'd only created short cuts they should still work as long as I was on the same PC wouldn't they? I'm going to test another drive in the laptop & see what happens ....