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Diomedes

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 5, 2004
250
0
San Francisco
I received a CD from a Windows user that my Mac does not like. Every time I insert it, my SuperDrive spits it out. On a Windows PC, it opens fine. Aside from running VPC, is there a way to force OS X to read it?
 
Open console under the utility folder and tell us what error message you get when you insert the cd?

Without knowing that, my guess right now would be that it is a type of cd-r that you superdrive cannot read rather than the file format it self. That is a shot in the dark though.
 
I thought CD's used a universal file format. There is no "Windows" or "Mac" CD format. Do other CD's work in your drive? Also, could this CD be scratched? I know my old iMac was finicky with scratched CD's that would work in other machines.
 
MoparShaha said:
I thought CD's used a universal file format. There is no "Windows" or "Mac" CD format. Do other CD's work in your drive? Also, could this CD be scratched? I know my old iMac was finicky with scratched CD's that would work in other machines.
Actually there are several formats for data on a CD. Although a Mac is able to read most of those formats, including the ones generally used for windows.
 
I have encountered two CDs burned with a Windows machine that I could not open. One was photos and the other was some random files of my brother's. I was able to read disk with a PC... so it was not the condition of the CD in case.

My CD-R drive in my slot-loading iMac would just spun around for a while the I believe it spat them out. I may be wrong, it has been a while seen I've had a problem.
 
The CD may only have the session instead of the CD closed, which can cause problems. You really run into this if the Windows user is using Roxio DirectCD or similar and does not format the disk to work on any computer when the eject it. If you don't do this, any other computer without DirectCD will not read the CD as valid.
 
Rather than ejecting Windows CDs, my machine will try to process them and lock up occasionally. My dual 800 with SuperDrive is worse than my blue and white G3 with CD-ROM drive.
 
The CD itself seems fine...my Dell desktop reads it just fine.

So am I out of luck? The CD contains some pretty important information...unfortunately, I can't go back to the person who gave it to me and ask them to format it properly.
 
Diomedes said:
The CD itself seems fine...my Dell desktop reads it just fine.

So am I out of luck? The CD contains some pretty important information...unfortunately, I can't go back to the person who gave it to me and ask them to format it properly.

Are your Mac and Dell networked? Why not just copy it to your Dell desktop, then transfer it over to your Mac? Or even re-burn a new CD correctly?
 
If you do re-create it, burn it in ISO 9660 format.

Easy CD Creator can do that, as can Toast on the Mac.
 
Diomedes said:
The CD itself seems fine...my Dell desktop reads it just fine.

So am I out of luck? The CD contains some pretty important information...unfortunately, I can't go back to the person who gave it to me and ask them to format it properly.

time to get a usb memory cards.
 
superbovine said:
time to get a usb memory cards.
For sure! By watching dealmac I ended up with a 1 GB USB cruzer for $50!.

But if they needs the data ASAP, the CD burner on their Dell is a better bet!
 
Well, I've noticed that some CD drives won't read some media. For example, I have an old CRT iMac which won't read "silver" CD-Rs, only the "blue" ones. I also have a CD-RW that won't write "blue" media reliably.

I agree with the other comments tho, if you have two machines they should be networked, which makes the problem just a shrugger.
 
CalfCanuck said:
Are your Mac and Dell networked? Why not just copy it to your Dell desktop, then transfer it over to your Mac? Or even re-burn a new CD correctly?

That's a good idea...I hadn't even thought of that.
 
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