CAN YOU SUPPLY DETAILS OF FREEWARE OR SHAREWARE TO ENABLE ME TO COPY
PERSONAL FOLDERS FROM MY WINDOWSXP TO CDR OR CDRW DISCS FOR TRANSFER
TO MY DAUGHTER'S SIMILAR SYSTEM?

Hi Dicky,

Indeed Windows XP does include "native support" for writing to CDR and
CDRW, this support is a lot simpler to use than some of the CDR
programs available and was actually licensed by Microsoft from
Adaptec's "Direct CD" program.

What Windows XP does is enables the CDR drive to be used in virtually
the same way as a Hard Disk in your computer. All you need to do to
create the CDR is to open "My Computer" from the desktop and look for
your CDR icon on the window that appears. When you find your CDR icon,
insert a blank CD and double click on the icon to open the blank CDR
in a Window. With certain settings turned on, Windows will ask you if
you want to create a new CD when you put a blank CD in the drive.

Now that you have the CDR Window open, you can open another window
that contains the personal folders you wish to copy, and simply drag
the folder into the CDR window. On the left of the CDR window you will
notice an option that says "Write these files to Disk". Click on this
when you have dragged all the files necessary onto the CDR window and
Windows will bring up a screen with instructions on what to do next.
This will create a CD that can then be used on any system to read your
personal folders - not just Windows XP.

If you wish to try a Freeware or Shareware version of CDR creating
software instead, try this site:

http://chuckr.bravepages.com/cdr.htm

Which has a good list of Shareware/Freeware programs and a brief blurb
on each.

Personally I would recommend Nero, which is a comercial program but
has a great demo version which is very functional and very easy to
use. You can download a copy of this excellent Nero software from
here:

http://www.ahead.de/en/index.html#download

I have found Nero to be simple to use and very stable. It has an
excellent "Wizard" which walks you through selecting the folders you
want to copy and writing them to disk. It also allows you to create
Music, Video and Photo CDs very easily and is a relatively small
program compared to some alternatives,its only about 2.6 MB to
download which should only taked 20 minutes on a 33.6K modem. Nero has
an excellent support site which will halp you with most problems you
will come across.

I hope this has been helpful, if you need any further help or need
anything clarified, please let me know.

Thank you,

Molloch

Windows XP should already included a way to copy your data (and music)
to CDR/W.
I am not using XP, but my friend do, and you can also see in this
article:
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/windowstips/story/0,24330,3356140,00.html

I cannot find any freeware to do this, but some shareware I find
suitable to do data backup are:
http://www.handybackup.com/
and my personal favorite (even though they call it full demo version):
http://www.nero.com/

Hope this helped!