Hi. Here is my problem(well one of them, lol. we won't go into my personal psycosis): I made back up copys of various files on my computer on several cds, at different times. Now when I try to reinstall my files or programs the cd-writer plus drive seems to not be reading the files properly. I was able to install a few programs before this started to occur, and also I can get the text and picture (jpg & gif) files from the cd's I made, but no other type of file. . These errors do not only happen with cd-r copies I made but also cds from companies. I should note that the cd's work fine on another computer, as I did check just to make sure. The drive is the one that came with my HP Pavillion: MITSUMI CR-48X5TE. I have looked all over your site (which is great!) and also elsewhere on the net, but I am unable to find any help on this issue. I am running Windows ME, Hewlet Packard Pavillion Model XG843. I can get files off floppys just fine, it is just a problem with this cd drive, and it worked fine for the fist 6 months and then I noticed this last month it has had this problem. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.Thank you.

Just assuming, Maybe the head is dirty? How about clean it?

Are you just trying to copy the files back to your hard drive or are you trying, as you put it, to reinstall a program from them? The reason I ask is that files stored on CD are marked as "read only" automatically (right click on the file name go to properties and you will see the box checked). Therefore, a program file will not necessarily work properly if "reinstalled" from there because it was probably not "read only" before it went there. If this is your problem, copy the files back to your hard drive and uncheck the read only boxes and they should work for you. If this is not what you mean, it is likely to be a malfunction of the CD drive and will probably need technical attention, unless Sanjaya is right.