burning cds on win xp home

i recently bought windows xp
obiously i cannot watch dvd's and burn cd's anymore,
if i knew this i would have never purchased it,
now i understand i have to buy a program or two,
my problem is that i want to burn cd to cd not mp3 to cd, what
do i have to buy, and why.
i dont want to load windows 98 2nd edition back onto my comp.
do i have to??
please reply a.s.a.p.
steve

 

Steve,
To watch DVD's you need a DVD drive (obviously) as well as either a software DVD decoder or a hardware decoder card. You would have needed one of these with 98SE!
I would recommend the software decoder path providing the machine meets minimum requirements. (P2 350+ and more than 128Mb of RAM as an example) If you have XP running then it should. WinDVD or powerDVD are a couple of good choices, I've used both and they have similar features and with a TV out card they look great on the TV, although PowerDVD often comes up with a copy protection error and won't allow output to the TV. To get around this I sometimes use Windows Media player to fool this encryption. Windows Media Player works well as a DVD player providing you have PowerDVD, WinDVD or similar installed as WMP uses one of these as the DVD engine.

XP has a rudimentary burning engine (which I've never bothered using), but I don't think you can burn (copy) entire CD's?
I would recommend CloneCD for CD copying, it's small, simple and effective. For CD copying and compiling as well as Packet writing(using a CDRW like a large floppy disk) I'd recommend Nero and the Nero InCD companion. I think both CloneCD and Nero have an evaluation download before you need to purchase the full product?

Cheers,

Paul

 

Burning CD's on XP

For best results, you will need to update or obtain cd burning software that's made to work with XP. Nero has a new update that works with XP. If you want to obtain new software, by far the deal of the century is one I've found at OfficeMax. Memorex had a pack of labels that came with a software CD that included not just the labeling software, but also the burning software called Simple CD or something like that. I paid $7.99, which is a good deal for 50 labels, but the XP compatable burning software just blows me away. After many months of struggling with Nero and their various so-called free upgrades (that always asked for $49 every 30 days), this is a great deal. Nero has fixed the XP problems with their latest update - 5.572 or something - but it's still a prerequisite that you have an earlier version of Nero - 4.0 or 5.0. Also, on the XP corporate update site, there is a compatable patch for Nero 4.0. Nero has a really cool desktop icon, but all things considered, Memorex should be applauded for including this XP compatable software. Just uninstall any previous cd burning software (add/remove, then make sure desktop shortcuts are deleted, then restart) because of possible conflicts.

 

I've tried Nero and Clone CD and they are both excellent. Both work very well with XP. I think Nero works a bit faster. Clone CD has a 21 day trial download. Nero's trial is only a few days. I have not had any luck with using media player to copy cd's ... very, very time consuming.