I think you're thinking too much about it, it should be very simple. -Start Windows Explorer -Put the copies of the files you want on the CD into one (perhaps new?) folder on your hard drive if they're not already together. -Go to that folder and highlight the files. To highlight multiple files, hold down the CTRL key as you click. -Just under the menu bar you should see the word "Burn" -Click Burn and follow the remaining instructions. EDIT I'm assuming you're creating data disks and not audio disks to play in audio devices. Come back if it's the second one, the steps may be different (I do audio disks with other software, not with windows. I'm not sure if windows gives the option of data or audio formats) This post was edited by snidely on Tue, Feb 18, 14 at 12:45

As only leaving Win98 18 months ago, kicking and screaming I admit, my position is it shouldn't matter R vs RW. I would recommend that she open My Computer and see if the drive is recognizing the disk. Unless you named the disk it should read as a series of numbers rather than the drive letter identifier. If the disk is recognized have her double click on it, or right click and select open on the appearing drop down menu. I do have one other thought. Your WMP version may be so more ahead than hers, she might not have the technical ability to open the files. You might have to redo the disk with perhaps Irfanview and ask her to install it on her system too. Irfanview worked fine on my old Win98 and still does on the one out in the garage. Plus, to avoid the possiblity use a CD-R if you do. DA

I have to disagree here. Finalizing is what is done on CD-R disks, I don't recall ever finalizing a CD-RW disk since the purpose of CD-RWs are to be reusable. Finalizing will render the disk unwritable in the future. CD-RWs can be tricky. They're not always compatible between cd drives. Also, CD-R disks don't always have to be finalized. It depends on the hardware being used. Once a disk is finalized, you cannot add any more to it. However before that you can and in a sense use it like a CD-RW. Again, it's not a clear issue. Sue, I'm a little unclear on what you're trying to do. Saving it to a disk certainly isn't just because you ran out of ink, at least I HOPE not! Are you trying to have someone else print it for you? If so, you could use a USB "flash" type drive if you or they have one. I think everyone should have a couple of those around anyway. They're the modern day "diskette". Another option is to email the file to get it printed. Also, if you're looking to have another person print it for you, be sure they have WordPerfect or a conversion program. Or you could print it to a .PDF and then they could open that if they have a program that will open .PDFs. Back to saving it onto CD. If you have XP or Vista, you should be able to just drag and drop it onto the icon for your CD writer drive, or click the save and save it to that drive. It should walk you through writing it to the disk. Once written, I'd suggest you rename the file on the drive, for instance rename it from "document.wpd" to "document1.wpd", then try to open the document on the CD. The reason for renaming the original file is if it was just a link, it would open the file on the drive rather than on the disk and this would be a double check. You could then name the original file back to the original name if you desired. HOWEVER, again, this does not guarantee that the disk will be readable on another machine. Things have improved over the years, but right now, CDRW is a relatively "old" technology and not being developed. BTW, jemdandy's comments are good to help make it more likely to be read on different machines. Hope I haven't thoroughly confused you!

Be aware that a CD-R and CD+R are 'write once' and read many times media. That is, once a apace on the disk has been written to, it is no longer available for writing. You can delete a file, but the space it occupied will not be available anymore. Now this part, I'm not to sure about - I'd have to do some checking - but, I recall that a space is reserved for the directory which is about 50 KB. Anytime the disk is 'opened' and new files added, a new directory must be written when the disk is closed. This new directory gets written into ther reserved space and the space where the old directory was gets marked off limits. After awhile, the disk runs out of reserved space for directories and can longer accept new files because there is no more "new" unwritten space available either for new directories or for files. Clicking on "properties" will show the disk not full when in fact it has no more 'new' space to write to. CR-R and CD+R work best for a one time mass file transfer, i.e., 20 files are written to CD from a hard drive in one drag-and-drop opertion. Or maybe, a folder (containing a bunch of files) is dragged and dropped to the CD. One should check for the amount of space needed for the files, else the copy process will balk before the entire set of files have been transferred (when the file transfer runs out of space). CDRW refers to read and write. It operates just like any other magnetic media, e'g', floppy disk and hard drives. The space on a CDRW can be erased and written to again. It does have a limited re-write time, however. Any one area can be rewritten from 1000 to 10,000 times and then becomes 'worn out'. I have heard arguments both pro and con about which is the best media for archiving - CR R or CDRW. The CD R proponents say that since any specific region on the disk is written only once, it will retain the data best of all; Others say that a CDRW can do just as well so long as it has not been overwritten on a regular basis. I tend to use CDRW for everything and format before using. I keep a few formatted disks on hand. In that way, I don't have to think about a bunch of stuff when I suddently need a CD - I just grab one out of my formatted stash and go.