Best DVD burning software (hopefully free?) for Windows XP?

[St. Bernard]

Greetings folks,

I'm hoping that this is going to be a quickie for someone with even more Windoze XPerience than I have.

What's the best DVD burning software for Windows XP? I'm hoping for something free, but....

I need to burn about 4GB of data to disk (Outlook .pst files, if it's helpful), running Windows XP 5.1.2600 SP2 on a Dell Latitude 620 (C2D 2GHz w/ 1GB RAM).

TiA as always!

[Filliam H. Muffman]

It should already have some sort of burning software on it if it came from Dell with the DVD burner.

[onthedownlow]

You should be able to use XP's builtin burning capabilities...but there are plenty of freebies out there too.

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=101758&rl=1

http://cdburnerxp.se/ - you can also use this to burn Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs...if applicable. ; )

[St. Bernard]

Thanks guys.

Neither Windows XP nor Dell seem to have built-in DVD burning utilities. I did a search of the help and all files for 'dvd' and didn't come up with anything. From the InformIT link:

If your PC's DVD recorder is of recent vintage, it also can record to CD-R and CD-RW discs.

We'll discuss those discs first because Windows XP's built-in optical disc recording software cannot handle DVDs. Those of you with older versions of Windows might want to skip ahead to the next section, "Using Bundled Software to Burn a DVD, "because Windows Me, 2000, 98, and earlier do not have built-in CD-recording capability.

onthedownlow, thanks for the link--I'll take a look (sadly Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are not applicable here--I'm just burning crappy DVD+Rs with old Outlook junk.

[onthedownlow]

The software should work...it is very small, clean, and easy to use. No pop-ups/ads/etc...just good free software.

I only mentioned the BD/HD support since you rarely find that in free software right now. Just thought it would add some flavor to it. lol

[Filliam H. Muffman]

It might be labeled as CD software. I poked around the Dell site and got the impression they sometimes bundle Roxio or Sonic software.

[onthedownlow]

Yes, Dell bundles Roxio/Sonic products with their computers...sometimes it is labeled under Roxio's name...sometimes Sonic.