Sorry to trouble the elders with this one, but my Mom is in need of some troubleshooting assistance. She had a new computer built for her which features a new TEAC CD-W540E.

She hasn't tried using any software yet for burning audio or backing up her computer. At the most basic level of dragging and dropping files using Windows Explorer, she can copy data onto CD-RW's but not CD-R's. When she inputs any variety of CD-R's, she gets a message to "insert a disc."

Any suggestions on what might be going wrong.

Thanks,
Derek.

From what you said above, I believe your Mom has been using a packet writing app that doesn't support CDRs. If she'd like to use it with CDR's as well, try DirectCD 5.x from www.roxio.com .

Thanks for the quick response, Van Nugent. If you don't mind, I've got two follow ups:

1. Should she need a packet writing app for just copying files? I could see the necessity if she was burning audio or using backup software, but I didn't think you needed a software app for dragging files using 'my computer' or 'windows explorer'.

2. Does it make sense that she can currently copy onto CD-RW's and not CD'Rs?

Derek.

With the exception of DirectCD and a couple of others, packet writing apps do not support CDRs because exactly as what you said, it makes more sense to use a CDRW for drag & drop.

she may need the packet writing software if that makes her archiving job easier. But for burning audio/data CDs, one doesn't really need a packet writing app. Also, packet writing is not too reliable and restoring data from a screwed up CDRW is very much more difficult than from a CDR disc.