Help needed to burn DVDRW

[Stuart Wright]

Hi Folks,
I have put together a new PC with a XPSP2 and a Pioneer 108 DVD RW drive in it.
With my old machine and it's CDRW I could just drag and drop files to it and it burned them.
That doesn't work, with the new drive.
How the hell do I burn stuff onto it?
And if with 20 years experience using computers, I can't do it, should Microsoft be burned to the ground?

[KraGorn]

I'm not sure but I believe XP doesn't have 'on the fly' burning on DVDs, only CDs. :(

For this you need something like InCD (a part of Nero (http://www.ahead.de/en/index.html)) or a similar sort of package from one of the other burner software suppliers. Nero itself is used to create CDs and DVDs by building up a list of files to burn and then doing so at one time, however part of the package is InCD which is an on-the-fly burner driver.

And yes, M$ should be burned to the ground. :grin:

[vonhosen]

You need packet writing software (like inCD from Nero) & then when you format the disc it acts like a mini hard drive & you can drag & drop files to it.

Not sure if the packet writing software supports DVD though & the differing packet writing software's aren't interchangeable. (ie you can't use InCD to write with & then another brand to view, you would have to use InCD on another computer if you wanted to view it on there.)

Most burning programs will of course allow you to either burn once to a disc & close it , or you can choose in the options not to close the disc & then just burn the extra files each time you want to add more. These number of computers that will be able to read your open discs may be fewer.

[Stuart Wright]

Thanks for your help, guys.
Windows unhelpfully opens an explorer window upon insertion of the blank DVD and the only relevant option is to erase it.
Which doesn't work.
As if I didn't dislike M$ enough already.

[crocodile]

If you're not already aware of the site, have a look here (http://www.videohelp.com/) for Freeware DVD burning S/W. Can't make any recommendations as I haven't bought a DVD writer yet!

[mjn]

You can configure what should happen when a blank disc is inserted into the drive, i have it so nothing happens on my system.

[KraGorn]

Burn4Free seems to get a lot of good comments, I've not tried it myself .. however, I'm not aware of any free 'packet writing' software which as vonhosen said is what the likes of InCD is.