On  6 Dec 98 at 11:10, Mary Wolden wrote:

> I have seen this kind of problem with CD's that were written with
> CD ROM Writers. Regular commercial CD's will read just fine but
> CD's written by CD ROM writers will freeze the computer.  Some CD
> ROMs just don't like some kinds of CDR media and some will not read
> any CD's that were written by a CD ROM writer at all.  If you look
> at the data side of the CD ROM and it is blue, gold or green then
> it has been written on a computer with a CD ROM Writer.  If this is
> your problem the only way to solve it is to get a new CD ROM that
> will read CDR media.

  The way I've heard it, many older CD-ROM drives can't read CD-RW
media, the re-usable disks which cost about $10 each rather than CD-R
which are about $2 each.  [It's pretty much impossible any more to
find a CD-R writer that can't also write CD-RW disks.]
  So the first key to writing disks to be read is to use CD-R and not
CD-RW media.

  The second issue is that most CD-R recording software defaults to
closing a "session" at the end of writing a bumbh of stuff, but
doesn't close off the final disk structures until told to do so.  In
Adaptec's EX-CD Creator Pro, I have to flip to an options page when I
make a CD and select "Close Disk" instead of "Close Session" to get
maximum compatibility with older CD-ROM drives.

David G

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