pc not recognising cd's

randm

hi, i tried to look at some photos i saved to cd-r and only one of the 4 discs opened up the "what do i want to do with this" box.all 4 cds were written at the same time, 2004. i have a dell dimension which has the built in cd dvd rom drive. when i went to search for the cd by clicking on the cd rom drive link in the library, it came up telling me that something was ready to be written desktop ini and this -
[.ShellClassInfo]

i seem to get blocked when i put this is in, so i have removed it.
the above also turned up as a notepad on my desktop a few days ago and is there everytime i start the pc.

i don't know if that has anything to do with not being able to view my cds.
the only thing i have done is to upgrade to windows 7 since doing the cd's and having the computer. the pics are of my brothers wedding and other important things so help would be appreciated. also, how do i future proof saving pics etc.do i put everything onto usb sticks? i do have back up on an external h.d.but wanted a secondary place. thank you.

emptybox

Deleted because duplicate post.

emptybox

The first thing to do would be to try those CDs on another PC, even if you have to go round to a friend or relative's

When you say they don't pop up the dialogue, I presume you have gone into Windows Explorer and tried to open them manually?
Do other software CD/DVDs work in that machine? Do commercial music CDs work OK?

The fact of the matter is that CD-Rs have a limited life. I recently went to play some CD-Rs that I had burnt music to about the same timeframe ago (12 years), and only half of them would play.
Seemingly if you have put sticky labels on them that also shortens the life of them (I had :doh: ).

As for backup, if you have the data on the internal hard drive and on an external drive, that should be enough, but never hurts to have extra copies.

randm

thank you. i did a search on theshell message and supposedly it was malware but i have scanned my computer with malwarebytes and it didn't remove it.i have deleted it and it can sit in the trash until i know what to do with it.
as regards the cds, the 3 didn't open up any dialogue box at all, i went into library and clicked on the dvd/cd drive link. i just tried them all again, these 3 when i click on properties say that they are all full but have o bytes, the one that works says how much of it is used and how much is free.
as you say, will probably have to try in another computer.

emptybox

I tried to give you a link to a Microsoft help page about how to stop Notpad popping up, and how to get rid of the .ShellClassInfo thing, but this forum blocked me. Not sure why? :undecided
But if you google .shellclassinfo it's the first result.

I think this forum is playing up? It seems to be cutting the end off my posts as well.

debitcardmayhem

which version of windows have you got?

psychic_teabag

There is software which can try very hard to recover lost data. I've used a thing called ddrescue on linux, but there is other stuff. A quick search suggests photorec which runs on windows.

ddrescue works by trying to read blocks over and over, keeping a log of what it has recovered. You can repeat the process on other machines with different drives to recover more and more until (hopefully) you have it all. Or if you wrote two copies, you can get it to continue recovering from the second copy which will hopefully have different bits missing.

(I'm also disappointed that CD and DVD aren't quite as reliable for archiving as I had hoped.)

Heedtheadvice

The idea of trying on a second machine is most worthwhile (or even a second known good CD drive). I have found that the laser bits sometimes do not last all that well and CDs or DVDs can be read (or written to) with a new drive on the same PC.

Trying a second machine will give you a clue as to if the problem lies (at least in part) with the CD or the drive.

If you find one that works of course copy straight away.

Archive quality CDs are available with better life specs but do cost a bit more!

randm

thank you, other cds do work in this computer, i tried in an old imac and also in my dvd player but they were not recognized. so much for new technology. i have loads of my dads slides and negatives from 50yrs ago and i watched a video yesterday!

SouthUKMan

Hi. Sadly a lot of CD-Rs from this time (and certainly going back to the late 90s) are now starting to fail. Some brands of CD-R have proved more robust than others... but like you, I've had a number of CD-Rs that I've had to throw away because the data was no longer readable. Really sad, as some of them were family photographs taken with an early digital camera.

Back in the late 90s and early 00s many people were led to believe that backing up onto CD-R was a great way to preserve those precious memories - sadly not! Yes you can try recovery software, however in my experience once a CD-R becomes damaged (either the metallic coating starts to flake away or the coating starts to breakdown due to microscopic spots of mold), then that is it for the disc. It is worth trying to recover the data of course, but I have had very little luck. One of the most simple and most successful methods of recovery is to simply try other computers with a CD drive. If you catch the disc before too much damage has occurred - then you might just be lucky. Due to the mechanical nature of these devices and the fact that the lasers do breakdown / become less efficient over time...you will often find that one CD drive will read an old disc when another CD drive won't.

In terms of alternative and better back up methods, I always propose having at least two alternative forms of back up running at the same time - even three if you want to be belts and braces. 1) an external hard drive. 2) a USB memory drive / or SD card (although these are small and easy to lose and difficult to label!). 3) cloud storage such as Microsoft OneDrive / Google Drive.

I really hope that helps. It is certainly worth taking action now to try and copy any CD-R backups onto other storage media, as the risk of the data / memories becoming lost / unreadable / unrecoverable is only going to get worse as time marches on. CD-Rs are not the wonder media we were led to believe all those years ago!

randm

i just wanted to give an update incase anyone else has the same problem.my pc did not recognise that i had a disc inserted and i tried a few different recovery programs which also asked me to insert a disc even though i has already done so, also when i clicked on properties it said 0 bytes of info. i then tried another recovery program and it did a general scan - nothing, did a full scan and it found all my photos on all 3 discs which i hadn't saved a copy of, i have now saved these onto my external h.d.
just wanted to say don't give up but try different programs, one could work.