DVD will not read

I am running XP on a HP. I have backed up many things on DVD's. All of them will open and show me what is on them except for one. It has opened for me in the past but now nothing. There are some very important pictures on there and I didn't save them anywhere eles as I thought this was a sure thing. When I insert the disk it acts as if it is blank it gives me no options. I took it into a game store thinking it was scratched and maybe that was why. He told me that was not the case he thought I needed to finalize it. It has always opened before and I have no idea what to do now.
Thank you to all who read this and big thank you to anyone who can help.

 

Hi Cyn714, Welcome to WindowsBBS.
What type of Software are you using to Burn DVD's?
There are reports of trouble with Nero 6 and InCD. Give us all the info you can and I'm sure someone will have an answer for you.
If you're using Nero - have you been to their Forums? I've found Nero Techies very helpful in the past. Neil.

 

Hi Cyn714,
Just a few things for you to try and let us know about, if the DVD is in need of finalizing that normally happens when you burn a CD or DVD unless you select to leave it open to add more files or data to it later. If you left it open then it will read in "Your" DVD drive Only! So if you changed Drives? IE replaced a bad DVD Drive? Or Changed Software? IE went from Nero to some other DVD burning software? If ether on of these things happened you may be in trouble.
If you can reinstall the old Burning software you might be able to finalize it.
If you had a bad DVD drive and replaced it? Well, you may be out of luck then too.
If you didn't do ether one of these 2 things then you should be able to read the DVD, unless you tried to add more files to it and it failed? Or gave you some error? It may have left the Disk unreadable.
I sure don't want to give you all bad news but if you can eliminate the above scenarios so we know that its something else we can move ahead to try and help you.
I have lost CDs and DVDs but simply having them in the Drive and be adding something to them and have a power fail or my favorite (my cat decided to ad some lines of code to my computer with 4 feet at a time on the keyboard) While I stepped away waiting for the Drive to finish it's task.
Even if one of the things above happened there are some CD & DVD repair programs out there that work very good at recovering lost data from a CD or DVD so let us know where we are at with your problem and I will look up some information on the repair software I mentioned and there may be some listed on this site as well?
Well, look forwarded to hearing from you when you can give us some more information so that we might be able to determine the exact cause and see if there is a repair or Fixit software program out there to possibly save your data.
FYI: in the future if you are trying to save some "got to have" and "never lose" data or files and you want to back them up? Use more then one kind of media IE a DVD and a tape backup drive or an external USB hard drive that you can disconnect and put away.
or at the very least make several back up CD's or DVD's and keep them in different locations incase of fire or flood so if the worst happens you can always go to the other location and get one of your copies. Believe me it does happen and it will work (o;
And if you keep or plain to keep DVDs for more then 5 years? Make copies of the copies and make sure they work every 4 or 5 years as CD's and DVD's have been known to go bad after a period of time. I have never found this to be true as I have CD's and DVD's I made may years ago and they still work just fine, But I have had CD's and DVD's just go Bad for no apparent reason after only a few months? Bad CD's/DVD's who knows? Buy brand name good quality CD's/DVD's you may pay a few more cents a piece for them but the piece of mind is well worth the few cents, FYI: the CD's/DVD's that I had go bad on me, Yeah that's right! They where the cheep unknown brand! And that's where they are today! Unknown! LOL
Hope this helps you and by all means feel free to drop by and give me or others more information to try and help you out if you are still having trouble and we will be glad to help any way possible OK?
Good Luck, Thanks, Merlin289, Rick.

 

Merlin here is more info

I appreciate all your help These are pictures of my chemo treatment and my daughter needs them for a report Friday. eeeeks
I burnt them onto a Memorex dvd-r and I believe I used the same laptop top I am using now. I was able to open that same disk several times after burning.
Now a few years later I am not able to view it on ANY computer. I took it to a game store and he also was not able to open it. I do not remember what program I used because it was 3 years ago. It possibly could have been Nero or maybe Roxio. The part that confuses me is that I was able to open it on various computers in the past and now no computer will open it Thank you for your reply and any help is welcomed.