HI list, When I say 'old' I'm not talking era's, obviously. But it is annoying when you have paid out good money in the past (like you would for a book) only to find that the DVD/CD won't play on modern systems. Can anyone advise me how to get these going again? Or to extract the information therefrom? e.g stuff from what was Archive Books and is now ArchiveBooks Ireland (etc.)? Best Wishes, Penny

Penny Is it the fact that you can't read the DVD/CD. Having been in the computer industry for over 30 years and also covered the IT for the SoG for many years I know the problems of CD's failing - it has been documented many times over. New machines can also cause problems with drives that will not recognise some of the old formats. It is the reason that I copied all of my DVD/CD's onto an external hard drive many years ago. With material like Archive CD Books it isn't an issue as they are all in PDF files. That you can see the files and they will not open. Then it is possible that the appropriate program hasn't been loaded It could also of course be that you are expecting it to autoplay and it isn't - that could be an issue with the operating system and you need to check the settings. Regards John Hanson Researcher, The Halsted Trust Website - www.halstedresearch.org.uk -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Penny Trueman via Sent: 08 January 2016 00:37 To: [email protected] Subject: [LAN] Old genealogy DVD's/CD's HI list, When I say 'old' I'm not talking era's, obviously. But it is annoying when you have paid out good money in the past (like you would for a book) only to find that the DVD/CD won't play on modern systems. Can anyone advise me how to get these going again? Or to extract the information therefrom? e.g stuff from what was Archive Books and is now ArchiveBooks Ireland (etc.)? Best Wishes, Penny :-+-: :-+-: :-+-: :-+-: :-+-: :-+-: :-+-: Buy or sell family research items on the GEN-MAT-UKI mailing list. No fees! The list's administrator can be contacted at [email protected] :-+-: :-+-: :-+-: :-+-: :-+-: :-+-: :-+-: ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Dear Penny, In Australia we have similar problems with some of the NSW bdm databases that required a program called " KAware" and some from Victoria and South Australia that need a program called " Digger" software. These programs date back to the DOS era computers (1990's+) They will not run in any way on 64 bit systems and most late model Windows 8 etc. They were still working on Microsoft XP systems which is no longer supported through Microsoft. What you need to determine is what PROGRAM was needed to run the particular Archive CD Book Since I do not have the Archive CD Book CD / DVD I can only make an initial guess. On your new computer: 1. Put the CD in the CD slot 2. Try to use the " explore CD" feature for the files types on the CD rather than just have it automatically open/ run. Look inside the file-folders too. 3. If you find lots of files with names like "somename.pdf " then you can try to open the individual file with Acrobat reader or some similar pdf reader If double-clicking on the PDF file name doesn't work, then try the following.... 4. Open Acrobat reader. Top of screen. Using file> open from the menu bar look for the file "somename.pdf" on your CD and click open. 5. IF you DO NOT find lots of "anyname.pdf" files you will need post to this list the names of the files on the CD so someone on this list can suggest a different way around your problem. Kind regards, Tony Moore (Castle Hill, NSW, Australia) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ On 8 Jan 2016 at 0:37, Penny Trueman via wrote: Date sent: Fri, 8 Jan 2016 00:37:07 +0000 To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Subject: [LAN] Old genealogy DVD's/CD's Send reply to: Penny Trueman <[email protected]>, [email protected] From: Penny Trueman via <[email protected]> > HI list, > When I say 'old' I'm not talking era's, obviously. > But it is annoying when you have paid out good money in the past (like you > would for a book) only to find that the DVD/CD won't play on modern systems. > Can anyone advise me how to get these going again? Or to extract the > information therefrom? > e.g stuff from what was Archive Books and is now ArchiveBooks Ireland > (etc.)? > Best Wishes, Penny