I just bought a new computer yesterday with a CD burner and never had one on any of my previous ones, so I was wondering if anyone can recommend a reliable free CD burning program that has no adware. I checked download.com but all the free ones were loaded with adware according to the user reviews. If it’s absolutely impossible to find a good free one, then what’s a good inexpensive one? Also, are there any particular features that are must haves for this type of software?
Thanks, and sorry if GQ is not the correct forum to post this in.
If it’s a new PC with XP for the OS, then CD burning is built in, although the built in burning functionality is slower and more cumbersome than commerical packages, it does work.
My XP machine just downloaded Windows Media Player 10 which appears to have burning built in and a decent interface. However I’ve not had a chance to test it so I’m just judging a book by its cover. Media Player 10 may work on other OSs as well, again I’ve not tried.
astro, yes, it is a new PC with XP for OS, though for some reason I couldn’t find a CD burning utility. I feel like a schmuck admitting this, but XP seems quite different to me than ME, which was what my last PC had.
I think I’ve still got a copy of some burning software that came with a drive I don’t use any more. IIRC, it’s a variation of EZCD Creator. If you’re interested, drop me an email and I’ll be happy to snail it to you.
IIRC circa Win 98 and WinME EZCD Creator and previous access the system hardware on a fairly low level and can cause serious system bellyaches with XP.
Media player will (IIRC), only burn music CDs. If you want a data CD, you’re going to have to do things differently.
There are two ways of burning files to CD in XP.
Select the files you want to burn to CD, right click, select “Send To”, then choose your CD burner.
Open the destination folder for the CD burner (I think it’s the CD burner drive itself… there’s also a temporary directory used for staging the files… it’s been a while). Copy the files to there. (See this link.)
After using either method 1 or method 2, go to your CD burner drive in My Computer, right click and choose “Write files to CD”… or whatever it says.
If you have any problems during the process, you can tweak some things like burning speed. Read this article.
If you purchased a new computer with a CD burner and XP, and it has no software such as EasyCD or the like, the manufacturer (whoever put the machine together) meant for you to use XP’s built in software as your burner. AFAIK, Roxio (who makes Easy CD Creator) built the engine for this and I’ve never had a problem with the XP burning. Whatever version of WMP your machine came with should have this capability but you might as well upgrade to WMP 10 since it’s free, and when it comes to data CD burning you just need to do what Nanoda suggests.
Every install of XP I’ve ever done defaults the inherent burner to be your burning software, and when you insert a blank disc into your CD burner a window should pop up asking you if you want to do something with this CD. Don’t quote me on that, though, because I usually end up turning that feature off.
However, if you’ve been installing and un-installing free CD burning software, you may have inadvertently screwed up some of the built in settings for XP CD burning in the process. Look around on the pages Nanoda linked to and other MS articles on XP’s burning capabilities to make sure everything works like you need it to.
To write a data CD in XP, all you have to do is open Windows Explorer and then highlight the files you want to burn and right click them and “Send to” your CD drive. Then right click the drive in Windows Explorer and select “Write these files to CD” and follw the Wizard. Presto!
Music, as has been suggested, can be burned from WMP.