DVD-RW & CD Drive designation

A couple weeks ago I purchased and installed a Liteon Dual Layer 16X DVD+-R/+-RW Drive. It was connected to the secondary IDE with the correct jumper configuration. It was installed in the bay under the DVD ROM drive in my Dell XPS T700r system. (5 years old) I had to disconnect the ZIP drive in order to use the IDE cable with the new Liteon. When I click on My Computer, it list the following.. DVD-RW Drive (D: ),DVD-Drive (E: ). This is as it should be. However if I click the drop down menu under My Documents, it has the following..CD Drive (D: ) and DVD Drive (E: ). Is this the way it should be? Also, is it possible to burn files to disk using the Save As option under the File menu on opened programs. It doesnt work for me.

Thank you
Also I use WIN XP Home, IE 6

XP won't burn DVD's only CDR/RW's. XP doesn't always give you the exact type of drive it is, per se, dvdrw or dvdrom. But as long as windows is recognizing the drives, your burning program Nero or whatever was shipped with that drive should burn the disks. You will need to select the dvdrw from the drop down menu in Nero though.

Not sure I understand your..XP wont burn DVD's only CDR/RW's. I have Sony DVD +R disk that I have copied data to. Am I missing something here.

Well, it was Microsoft that states this. Do you have SP2 installed? That might be the difference. But I would still use something other than XP's burner software.....

Yes, I have SP 2 and I use Nero Express Start Smart. Sorry for the confusion. However, there is a lot I need to learn to get the burns done right. Have made a few coasters. I copied my entire My Picture folder but when I clicked on one of the icon, I would get a message like..file has not been saved to a folder, would you like to do that now. ..Dont know why I would have to save back to the hard drive in order to open them. I'm sure it's probably something I didnt do in the right sequence. At times, I attempt to burn to a DVD RW and I get..there is no writeable disk in the drive. and it says to enter the correct disk. Hopefully I will get the hang of it before long.

Thank you,

Then my comment was correct, it's not XP's built in burner that burned the disk but Nero; a separate software altogether. Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean about saving the folder. Is this after you've burned or before burning. When you add files to Nero it places them in a temporary place on your harddrive before burning to disk. Then after it burns the files, it asks if you want to keep those files placed in the temporary part of your drive, if you say yes, then they are still there. I usually say no to this question and Nero deletes the temporary files.

What version of Nero are you using? Might try an update to the version you have, as the version you have might not support your dvd drive. Don't get me wrong here, I too just recently bought a new DVDRW LiteOn and still had to update Nero to make it work with DVD's.

While copying the photos to the CD-R disk, everything seem to go fine, however when I put the disk back in to see the photos, I get a page that has a "header" that says..My Pictures_1(D: ). In the display area there is a folder named My Pictures. When I click that folder I then get a page with a folder named..C, I click that and then I get one named Docume~1,Click that then comes one named AllUse~1, after that comes another Docume~1, click that one then another on of My pictures appear. I click that one and get a page with 29 folders on it with names/numbers under each one such as..20A238~1. If I left click one of those I get another page with more "files". If I right click one of those I get the message..The folder does not exist..Do you want to create the named folder. If I click no I still get another page with a Save In window to choose where I want to save the file. I have to click Yes in order for the photo a to appear.. I know this may be confusing but its best I can explain it.

I have Ver. 6.3.1.11 installed.

Instead of copying the "My Pictures" folder, try copying just the photos, or making a folder on your harddrive, title photos, or whatever, then burn that to the cdr. I think you're getting a confilict with the "My Pictures" folder on your cd and the one on your harddrive built into XP.

I will try and do something as you have suggested on your latest reply. Thanks again.