Forgive me for going off topic but I`m hoping there may be some techie type here who can help. I have been burning a lot of freebie Bryce & Poser stuff to cd-r recently with the idea of having a monster installing session when I had the time but when I ran the disc today all the zips had disappeared and had been replaced by 29 .cda files. I now find all part recorded discs, containing various file types, are exactly the same. Discs finalised (in Nero) are OK. I have run my own Nortons AV and also the online Panda scan and the system comes up clear. The files are on the discs, because they show up to 500mb used space while the cda files are only 1kb each. The zips etc are just not showing. Thanks for any help you may be able to give.

.cda files are something to do with music soundtrack files aren't they? Hmm... Try your CDs in a different CD reader - that was a solution someone I know tried when they had this problem with some files I burnt to CD for them that came up as .cda files.

Hope you didn't delete anything from your harddrive yet. .cda is Cd Audio. The standard audio file for CD's. HOW your program even let you do this amazes me. Your files/discs aren't infected. And, it's normal for .cda's to show up as only 1kb, that's just standard. Whether or not you can ever retrieve anything off those disks, I don't know, I kinda doubt it. I guess try accessing them through Nero, would be my only guess. AgentSmith

I had this happen to me once. I was making a "data" CD with EZ CD Creator. Just backing up folders of various stuff there was some .wav files. They caused it to change the disk to all .cda files. I know it was them because I burnt another CD without the .wav files and it worked fine. I dont know how to fix it I just trashed the CD. Since then I've never made a Cd with both audio type files and data files. I thought if I was burning as "data" the wavs would be treated as data instead of audio...

Unfortunately it is not just this disc that has the problem. Anything I record now shows as 29 cda files and all previous discs not finallised also. I still have all my original files on discs but they all show as cda.unless they were finalised, something I didnt always do . The problem is I have 2 PCs, my old clockwork one which is connected to the net and my new more powerful one (I think it has a bigger spring) in another part of the house which I use for Bryce etc. So, anything I d/l I burn to disc on multisession and transfer to the new machine. Its a poor mans network. Ive used this system for some time with no probs. But its reading cda,s in both machines in all drives. I think Im stuffed. Thanks for the help and advice and if anyone else knows the answer......

I have easy cd creator also and the only time you will yet .cda files is if you did not select 'data' cd recording, I regularly backup changes to my web sites and any free zips, including music (sound bites or FX) using the 'data' recording and my files show up fine, you might check this when recording your files. I've also gotten in the habit of reading my data cds in the dvd drive, no accidental erases or quirks in reading the cd....:) Sounds like the drives are stuck with only one type of read...You might also re-install the software for your drives or do a complete system restore to a previous date, before this started happening, the last resort would be to do a OS reinstall...just a thought...:)

You might try a CD ripper. It will extract the cda files to wav files, but try then simply renaming them into zip. BTW, check whether you inadvertently left Create Audio CD on in your burning program. It would possibly mean that you are not able to use the ripped files, because the cda files are a bit compressed wavs so I don't know what that compression/ re-compression of zips would do to them. I have never heard of something like that happening. Oh, yeah: http://www.share2.com/cdripper/cd_ripper.htm http://www.maz-sound.com/cd-rippers.html I'd recommend a freeware: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

The point is, this is now happening to files on discs which were previously ok so it`s not a case of just this one recording session. All my discs are now corrupted

Check your cd drive then it's reading them incorrectly, also have you installed any audio programs? New players, editors? Sometimes these softwares take over file extensions for all files on a cd....

You really should reinstall the software. The needle shouldn't stick on computers no matter what size their spring is, 8) so rather than your disks being corrupted I think it is the software. Just reinstall on both machines and I think your problem will vanish. Catlin

Could be your CD drive itself. My wifes mother has a cd drive that thinks all my burnt data CDs are audio cds. Every other drive thinks they are data CDs.

I would say it's definitely not the CD's, once burned CD's can't get corrupted like a floppy though data can be destroyed if they get scratched. Something is wrong with either your CD drives or their drivers.

I know someone who had a similar problem. We never could figure out why the drive saw everything as Audio-CD, but when we tried another drive it workded again. It seemed like the drive that only saw CDA-files was broken.

Have you tried rebooting the computer? If you have norton utilities as well as AV run disk and then win doctor and let it try to fix your registry. Data doesn't change on a CDR once it's burned it can't be rewritten unless its a CDRW. Are all your disks showing CDA extensions or just "open Session" disks? Put in windows, bryce, or some CD where you know the content is not CDA (CD Audio). If it's an autostart CD you can right click on the drive in explorer and press explore instead of open to browse the files. Look and see if the known CD still shows the same CDA files and also if the same names are on each. Try a different CD. Are the names exactly the same? Your Atapi or scsi CD driver is corrupt. The cure is to remove the CD drive from the software system and reboot, then allow Windows to reinstall the drivers. You will also need to reinstall nero. If the names on the CD are different but all have the cda extension it's probably the last audio player or upgrade you installed or nero. Try uninstalling and reinstalling the software. Let me know if any of this works and also a little bit more about your operating system. Any other problems, system crashes, do you shut the power off without shutting down, are there disk errors popping up when you run scandisk?

Sambuckus, What Flak said sparked my memory. Yeah there's a trick to getting nero to read files properly unfortionately I can't remember what it is as it's been over a year since I used Nero and I had it on w95. All I can offer is to read the docs really well, and I think it had something to do with the systray icon for Nero or the associated softwares. sorry not to be of more help, - TJ

In any case, try dumping all the contents of the CD into an empty temporary folder on your hard drive. Then using Windows explorer, look in this folder and note the file's extension format and the individual file sizes. You can safely disregard all those files that are 1kb. since those are your "cda" files. Then rename the others to the "zip" file extension and then try to uncompress them using your unpacking software (Winzip or some such animal). Good luck!