My friend has a bunch of pictures on their dvd rw. It was showing all the pictures under explorer, but one day when she went to view the dvd it didnt show the pictures at all. All it said is click and drag to add files. Now the data is still on there. If u goto internet explorer and try to open something from the disc u can see all the files. But if u try to copy them it says please format this cd to use it. any ideas???
DO NOT FORMAT THE DISC! That will wipe out all the data--all the pictures. Place the disc in a DVD-ROM drive, one that cannot write to a disc but can only read. Can you highlight a file or the files and drag/copy them to another folder on the hard drive? If you can, do that before anything else. Then check to make sure every file is on the hard drive and legible.
Something may have corrupted the address system on the disc, perhaps when the disc was placed into the recording drive and more than one software program tried to access the packet-written format structure. (There are dozens of different, incompatible versions; and they very often conflict with each other. That is the chief reason why rewritable discs have never caught on and why they are blamed for instability.) Once you have off loaded every file, do a complete erasure of the disc, not a "quick" erasure. The disc will then be reusable.
ya they dont have another cd drive just 1 laptop. Thing is that im tryin to help them over remote assistance. All thats on the cd is pictures. u can open them with picture viewers or internet explorer but windows explorer shows nothing on the disc, but in properties it clearly shows 345megs on it. Anytime u try to click and drag or copy and paste lets say to her USB stick it just says CANNOT COPY THIS FILE U MUST FORMAT. its really weird problem
If she can open a picture in a viewer, can she save it to a USB drive or her hard drive? If she can, she will have to do it for each and every jpg. It's tedious, but I suspect that it's the only way she's going to get them off her laptop.
Does she have Roxio and Nero installed on the laptop? Those are the two most common warring packet-writing software versions that create such problems in corrupting the file structures. It's one or the other, but not both on the same computer.
