CD that played in Inspiron 5160 won't play in 1525!

I had an old Inspiron (5160) I bought it in 2003 and I recorded a bunch of stuff on it and saved it to like a few dozen CDs, like music video, etc.

THen I bought this Inspiron 1525 from Dell (with Vista for the first time) last year and now it won't play anything I recorded on the CDs from the other computer.

Basically what happens is that I put the old CD in and it takes me to the computer folder. I see my C: and D: drive as usual and now also the E: drive. It does even recognize that the CD is nearly full (say it says 680 mb and it says I can even record 20mb more in there). Yet the folder is empty since I can't see anything there. So the computer recognizes there are things in there and the CD is nearly full but I don't see anything.

Do you know what the problem might be? I asked around a few places with no success.

Thank you so much for your help

 

Maybe the files you have saved are hidden. These are the steps in Windws XP that allows you to see hidden files:
1- go the the explorer
2- open 'tools' and 'folder options'
3- go to the 'view tab' and uncheck 'show hidden files and folders'

the procedure in vista is similar. The only difference is the 'tools' menu does not show in the explorer by default. I don't have access to a system running vista, so use google to find how to enable the menus in windows explorer under vista.

If you still can see your files it is likelly that the drive in your new computer is incompatible with the CDs/DVDs that you're trying to read. So my advice is to try to read them in another computer.
Incompatibility between mediums and optical drive happens often in the world of laptops and sometimes in the world of desktops in particular when you burd using the multi-sessions option. Once I burned few DVDs on a Dell desktop but couldnt read them in that computer afterwords. I try them in my laptop and they worked just fine

good luck

 

Thank you so much for your reply.

I'll give it a try tonight.