I've had a lot of people confused about how to create CD's or DVD's using the Windows XP built-in feature, so in this discussion, I'm going to walk you through it.  There are also several other programs which you can install to make CD's, but this discussion will only focus on the Windows XP program, since all programs differ in many ways.  For more information on types of disks, click here for information on CD's, and click here for information on DVD's.

First, put a blank CD-R in your rewriteable CD drive (this process will also be identical for DVD disks). If you wait a few seconds, you will get a window as shown here. I usually just click Cancel on this window, then I open up Windows Explorer.
If you just want to copy the file(s) to the CD, you can skip this step. Since you can copy files to a CD over and over until it is full, let's say you want to create a folder on the CD called Today to put the file(s) into. First, you left click once on the CD drive in the left pane so it is highlighted, then go to the File menu, go down to Folder, then create a folder called Today.

The next thing to do is click on the + next to the CD drive letter in the left pane. You will then see the directory you just created. Now, in the left pane, move the slider up until you see the directory which contains the file you want to copy (in this example, it's the temp directory.  You will then see the files in that directory in the right pane (in this example it is cd_rec1.jpg).  Now click and drag the file down to the Today directory.

Now, you will see the Files to Be Written to CD on the right top.  Now all you need to do is go to the File menu, then click on Write These Files to CD.  When it's done, just finish up the wizard and you're done!

If you have any questions or comments, click