Discard the warped CD, start over

Q. I used Nero to burn a Memorex CD-R with some photographs in JPG files, and not everybody can make that disc work in their computers. Specifically, the CD reads OK on my desktop machine and on a friend's laptop.
However, on my nephew's laptop we get a message that the CD is corrupted and can't be read. My computer uses Windows 98SE, my friend is on Windows XP, and my nephew is on Windows XP.
How can this happen?
-- John Gwynn juno.com
A. The problem vexing the three of you folks is not a software glitch or even bad hardware, since all those computers are capable of reading other CDs, just not this one. The problem is that the CD in question is somehow warped or otherwise a tad off center for one of those two laptops you tried.
Because laptop CD drives are built in much more thin cases than desktop drives, the tolerance for error is much less in finding the exact spot on a CD with its bootup information. A drive must find this boot sector first before it can read anything off the disc.
Think of it like a flashlight shining on something up close and something farther away. The farther away, the larger the circle of light. Even though they are supposed to be tightly focused laser beams, the footprint on the reading light for CDs and DVDs is larger and more tolerant in the larger desktop drives than for the laptops.
We're talking tiny distances here, things on the order of a human hair's width.
The fix, of course, is to make another copy for your nephew's laptop. It would be best if you use a blank disc from a different batch than the one that produced the dud.
Q. I have an AMD K6-2 450 mHz computer and recently signed on with EarthLink to be my Internet provider, mainly because it was offering a small video camera, free of charge. I received the camera as promised, along with the CD-ROM software and a small booklet explaining the installation procedure.
The software installed without incident, and then I was told to plug the camera in to the USB port. A message came on the dialog box saying, "Video camera is not functioning properly. No such interface supported."
Can you help me to get this thing installed? I'm willing to try anything, but I'm not all that knowledgeable about computers.
-- Kenneth Kreischer earthlink.net
A. Your elderly computer's operating system is the culprit, Mr. K., and I can only hope that you have the installation CD for the Windows 98SE operating system upon which it is based.
Windows 98, named for the year it was first shipped, originally came with no support for the so-called universal serial bus (USB) ports that are the gold standard for connecting peripherals. It was necessary to upgrade 98 with one of Microsoft's service packs called SE.
Hopefully, you have the CDs that came with Windows 98SE. If so, your fix is as simple as placing the Windows disc in the drive when you connect the camera. The computer then will load from the Windows disc the drivers needed to operate it.
Before you do this, however, you are going to need to remove the software for the video camera that you installed when you tried to set things up and failed. If you don't do this, the computer will no longer recognize a new device and will not attempt to load the needed drivers when you plug in that camera a second time.
This one-strike-and-you're-out problem means that if Windows fails to install something it recognized once, it will not recognize it again. You need to force the computer to detect the camera again.
So right-click on the My Computer icon and select Properties. Look for the Device Manager tab in the Properties display. Open Device Manager and go to the bottom of the devices to the USB ports and pick the one for your camera. Now, click on the Remove box in the Device Manager, and the drivers will be erased.
With this done, the computer once again will recognize that a new device has been attached and start the process to install it. But this time you will have the Windows 98SE disc available to make it work.
Knight Ridder Newspapers