How To Burn Files to a CD

Insert CD Dialog

Often people want to copy files from their computer to a blank CD. Doing so is fairly easy on Windows XP. First, open your CD drive tray and insert the CD, shiny side down. Gently push the drive closed.  On notebook computers the drive might be on the side; on desktop computers it is almost always on the front (there are some exceptions, such as all-in-one machines).  Once the CD is in the drive, you likely will get a dialog similar to the one on the right. if not, open My Computer and then double click on the CD drive icon.

From there, the CD window will open. Drag and drop any files you want to copy to the CD to that window.  This is the “trickiest” part – you have to be able to find the files you want to save and be able to drag them to the open window.  There are many ways to do this – I show the most common in the video, below.  Once you have the files you want in the drive (up to about 700 MB), click the “Write the files to CD” button, as shown in the image to the right (click on it to make it larger):

Write files to CD

You will then get a “Wizard” that walks you thought the rest of the burning (copying) process.  

Sometimes it is easier to see things work and not just read about them, so below is a video of the whole process – including seeing me resize windows and drag and drop the files.