Currently Browsing: Troubleshooting
Microsoft offers several no-cost tools for burning DVDs and CDs. For example, if you insert a blank, writable disc AutoPlay will display a menu with options for burning audio or data discs. Windows Media Player can also be used for burning discs, click the Burn tab on the right as shown in the image below. Then drag audio or video files from the center pane to the list on the right. Click Start burn to burn the disc.
After the jump, more CD and DVD burning tools, including Movie Maker and ways to burn ISOs.
Ever have a friend ask you to help them repair their computer only to find that its so bloated with malware that you think they should just nuke the site from orbit? Some recent malware can be quite difficult to remove. In these sorts of situations you might try an alternative approach: boot from a CD-ROM or DVD and run the repair tools while the virus-laden operating system (OS) is offline. There are other recovery tasks most easily performed while the OS is offline, but I spend more time helping people with malware than doing anything else for them.
How to create a bootable disc? You could do it with Linux, but then you’d have to learn another OS, I prefer to stick with Windows. Besides, there are a lot of useful tools already available for Windows. You may have heard of the Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE or simply PE) that has been available to computer vendors for years. Microsoft made it available to everyone a few years ago, and I’ve found it to be extremely useful. There are several ways to create a customized Windows PE disc, the simplest approach is to use the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) that some colleagues of mine in the Solutions Accelerators Team (SAT) at Microsoft created. You’ll need several gigs of storage space to download and use everything described below, make sure you have enough room before you start!
Question from a reader:
TIME MACHINE 5200 .
A question from a reader:
hello, i recently purchased windows 7 for my father because of all the problems he has had with vista, everything is fine with the package only windows media player now doesnt recognise that we have a cd/dvd burner drive built in to our laptop. it simply says connect a burner and restart, please could you offer some advice or help please
If you’re missing the Aero glass effects and 3D-flip in Windows Vista or Windows 7, here’s how you can fix it.
im hoping you can help me. you seem to know a lil about this kinda stuff. heres what happened: I recently installed media player11 off of the web, well ever since then, i have not been able to use my cd/dvd player/burner. it dont recognize it. it thinks that it is unplugged, or that i dont have one. but i know i do. it was working fine before.do you know anything i can do to fix my prob??? any suggestions would be greatfully appreciated. thank you. -Sandy
Hi, Sandy. Does the CD drive appear in Explorer? For example, if you open My Computer from the Start menu, do you see it there?
Yes, it says : local disk c. You know, this is weird, but today it worked for long enough to burn one disk, then it did the same thing again. when i go to the media player, and set up a burn list, above my playlist where it should say “insert a blank disk”, it says “please plug in a burner, then restart the player to continue.” I have had many problems before, but i have never seen this.I tried going to the microsoft help sites, but they don’t seem to know what i am talking about.Thank you for your response.–sandy
I have a popular post on troubleshooting startup problems. Problem is, I only cover how to troubleshoot software problems. If your computer is beeping and Windows doesn’t even begin to load, then you’ve got yourself a hardware problem.
The beeping at startup is the computer’s way of telling you that something is wrong. If the computer doesn’t do anything at startup, well, that’s also a good sign that something is wrong. Let’s figure out what it is, based on the symptoms.