a month ago, i backed up all of my doc files on to a CD...recently, i needed to retrieve some of those docs, and i couldn't...i was able to retrieve most of them, but not all...the "properties" tab said that they were set on "read-only"...so i switched it to "archive" and it would not open the docs...any suggestions??

Files copied from a CD-ROM are, by default, read-only - their file-attribute on the CD goes with them when copied to your HD. The rest of your message is vague - you don't say what sort of error (if any) you're getting - assuming the 'docs' are MS Word documents, does Word give an error, or does it just fail to open? When you say you were able to retrieve "most", "but not all" docs, does that mean you had problems copying them from CD - or they refused to open, what? More info, please.