Why is desktop.ini "Ready to Be Written to the Disc" of any CD or DVD inserted under Windows 7?

Here is what happened:

  1. In the process of a burning a CD/DVD or preparing to burn a CD/DVD, you changed the sort order, arrangement, or other layout/view option for the special "Burn DVD" folder Windows uses as a staging area for these files to be different than the default view.
  2. A hidden "desktop.ini" file is created automatically to hold this information, so that the next time you view the folder it will remember your preference. This is normal behavior for any folder on your file system, and if you go looking for it you can find this file all over the place.
  3. After burning the CD, this file was cleared out along with everything else. However, your layout was still non-standard, and so it is recreated when the folder is closed.
  4. You now have a file sitting in the special staging folder, and that trips up the "File waiting to be burned to CD" notice.

The post Desktop.ini file keeps showing up as a file to be written to a blank CD says it is normal behavior. One person suggests hiding system files so you don't see it.


Ignore it, it's just a file similar to the thumbs.db file you see. It can also be considered the same as the .DS_STORE file found in Macs. It just contains certain configuration for the current directory.