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How to Write to a CD with Windows XP

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There are a number of ways to write to a CD, the windows XP way (and by far the easiest) is to:  

Open the folder that contains the item or file that you want to write to the CD this is generally your “My Documents” folder.

 My Documents
Select the file that you want to copy onto the CD then click Copy in the left hand side under “File and Folder Tasks”
   
Copy Dialog
    Next Select the place where you want to copy the file to, this would be your CD-RW drive and is usually but not always drive D:
    • When you see the “You have files waiting to be written to the CD” balloon click on the balloon to bring up the CD Writing Dialog.
Callout
Now you have to start the CD writing Wizard by clicking on “Write these files to CD”.
    The next step is to name the CD, the default is the Date and this is fine. Click next to continue with the wizard.
Name the CD
Oops
    If you see something similar to Figure 6 it just means you forgot to inset a disk. Once the CD the program will continue on its own.
    Once the file(s) have been written to the CD successfully you will see a notice
    Finished
   

What kind of CD should you use?

Get a printable version of this document.
With CD-R s you can write to the CD then continue to write until the Disk is full. With CD-RW you can go back and erase the entire disk then start again. So it really boils down to if you want a permanent record or not. In theory CD-R s are cannot be overwritten there for are considered permanent.  
For more information about the diferences between CD-R and CD-RW please see my tip which you can find here.