# Why can't my computer see the songs on my burned CD? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 30, 2005, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-my-computer-see-the-songs-on-my-burned-cd/314882 "2005-07-30T13:48:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-my-computer-see-the-songs-on-my-burned-cd/314882/1 "2005-07-30T13:48:01Z")
I just burned a CD using Windows Media Player. It appeared to work correctly. And all the songs play just fine on my CD player. So how come when I put the disc back in my computer, Windows still thinks it’s blank? How can I fix this? ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-my-computer-see-the-songs-on-my-burned-cd/314882/2 "2005-07-30T14:06:14Z")
Are you sure you burned it as an audio disk? If your CD supports MP3 discs, it might have still played. But still, it shouldn’t be seen as blank, so I don’t know. Have you visually checked it for dust/hairs, etc? Can the drive still read other discs? Maybe the drive happened to die on you at that point. Is it a CD-R or a CD-RW? ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-my-computer-see-the-songs-on-my-burned-cd/314882/3 "2005-07-30T14:08:42Z")
The CD I burned to is a CD-R. The drive I’m trying to play it with is my laptop’s CD-RW drive (the same drive that burned it), which normally plays audio CD’s just fine. But I think for some reason it can’t tell that this is an audio CD now (or maybe I need to do something other than just buring the music in order to make it an audio CD). However, if it’s not burned as an audio CD, why would it play on my discman? ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-my-computer-see-the-songs-on-my-burned-cd/314882/4 "2005-07-30T14:11:21Z")
I didn’t rip to MP3. It says I ripped to “Windows Media Audio” ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-my-computer-see-the-songs-on-my-burned-cd/314882/5 "2005-07-30T14:14:32Z")
Clarification: it _ripped_ to WMA. The help file says it converts that to PCM when burning. So I assume it should be PCM format on the CD ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-my-computer-see-the-songs-on-my-burned-cd/314882/6 "2005-07-30T14:55:22Z")
When you browse to it with windows explorer, does it look blank there? ---
**Author:** ![istara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e79b87/32.png) [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2005, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-my-computer-see-the-songs-on-my-burned-cd/314882/7 "2005-07-30T17:24:43Z")
It could be a one-off glitch. Someone recently gave me a burned-DVD that my G5 could not/would not recognise. (My G4 could read it fine). A week later they gave me another one, burned exactly the same way, and the G5 could see it no problem. So first thing to do might be to try burning another compilation, just to rule out a one-off glitch.