Wipe Out Windows Annoyances

Media Mayhem

Burn It Now

The annoyance: Windows Explorer provides an interface to my CD-R/RW drive that lets me drag files to that drive in Explorer. But often I drag, I drop--and nothing happens. Rather than actually writing the files to the recordable CD, Windows merely queues them in a folder (using up hard disk space in the process) until I'm ready to write and close the CD.

The fix: First make sure you installed the packet-writing driver that came with your drive or PC (Roxio Easy CD Creator and Nero Burning ROM supply their own packet-writing drivers) by looking in the program's Start menu folder for a shortcut (for example, Roxio's is called Drag-to-Disc). Even if you have this driver installed, however, Windows may still queue the files for later writing. The solution is utterly counterintuitive. Right-click the CD writer in Explorer, choose Properties, select the Recording tab, and uncheck (that's right, disable) Enable CD recording on this drive (see Figure 6). From now on, when you drag files and folders and drop them on the recordable drive's icon, the burner will write them to the disc immediately, using the packet-writing driver.

Recover Your Autoplay

The annoyance: Once upon a time, Windows anticipated my every move, popping up a wizard when I plugged in my camera, or launching my media player when I inserted a music CD. Then one day (after I installed a new program, or clicked--without reading carefully--a pop-up dialog box), Windows forgot what to do with my music, photos, and other media files.

The fix: Right-clicking the drive or device in Explorer and choosing Properties will lead you to an Autoplay or Events tab where you can reestablish which program should do what when you plug in, but Autoplay settings sometimes remain stubbornly broken. Microsoft's Autoplay Repair Wizard fixes the botched settings. Although the Microsoft download page asks you to validate your copy of Windows before downloading the wizard (how annoying!), you can, perversely enough, opt out of validation and still download the fix.