Windows 7 SP1 Can Fail to Read DVDs Burned on XP PCs

Under specific circumstances, users running the latest versions of Windows are no longer able to access data on the DVDs they created using a decade old version of the operating system, Windows XP.

Microsoft has offered official confirmation of the issue and is also providing customers affected by this problem with a solution.

The company published KB 2566584 offering additional details about the glitch. In the Knowledge Base article the software giant also notes that this issue has also been reported by customers running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, in addition to those with Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) machines.

The RTM variants of the two platforms are also affected, Microsoft revealed.

“Consider the following scenario: you use a Windows XP-based computer to write data to a DVD; you do not finalize the DVD; you try to read the DVD on a Windows 7-based or Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer. In this scenario, the data may not be visible,” the software giant explained.

Since it’s already offering a hotfix for this glitch, Microsoft also detailed its source:

“This issue occurs because the DVD is missing internal session data. This causes Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to treat the DVD as invalid,” the software giant said.

An update designed to automatically resolve this issue has yet to be made available, and Microsoft offered no indication of whether it’s even planning such a refresh or not. A manual workaround has also not been detailed by the company.

However, customers that have experienced problems such as those described in this article need only head over to Microsoft Support and grab the hotfix the software giant is offering.

It appears that the company is planning to include the KB 2566584 hotfix into Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) RTM Build 7601.17514.101119-1850 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) RTM are available for download here.

Windows 7 RTM Enterprise 90-Day Evaluation is available for download here.