(Ted Harding) wrote:

On 11-Dec-08 00:47:28, Ian Thompson-Bell wrote:

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(Ted Harding) wrote:

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Hi Folks, I have a CD which was burnt using Windows Media Player on Vista. It carries a couple of directories with many (mostly PDF) files.

When accessed with Vista, its contents are visisble and the files can be accessed.

However, Linux doesn't want to know!

I had this problem once before with A cd made by a friend with media player under XP. It turned the disc had not be 'finalised' - I use the term loosely - we put the disk back in the XP machine, ran media player and did the finalizing and then linux could read it.

HTH Cheers Ian

I suspected that might be to root of the problem (given the error message). If so, though, how does one set about getting Windows (Vista) Media Player to "finalise" the disk as Ian describes? I can't find any option to get this to happen!

(Sorry to bang on about such an unsavoury topic, but it's all for the sake of using Linux!)

Ted.

I have been thinking some more about this, trying to remember just what happened - it was Windows so I confess I was not paying much attention.

I think maybe what happened was my friend dragged and dropped files onto the CD (possibly using media player - I am not sure; all I remember was it had a horrible user interface), the CD whirred a bit and that was it - she thought the CD was done. What I suspect is that Windows just sets up the file structure on the CD before writing the data and only does the data write when you click some button (which my friend did not do). The result was my Linux box gave the CD pretty much the same error you got. I tried it on a Win 2000 box and that told me how much space was 'used' on the CD but could not see any files.

Back at my friend's with the CD, when placed in her XP box, media player seemed to recognise the CD (possibly because she had done nothing else since with media player) and she clicked the button to finish i.e. write the data to, the disk.

I think, therefore, it was more by luck than judgement that we managed to complete this disk so my Linux box would read it. Im suspect your best bet is simply to redo the CD.

Cheers

Ian