How Can I erase CD-RW & DVD-RW

I have just purchased RW discs so I can reuse them for photo projects etc, but when I am trying to delete the contents of a disc then it always comes up with an error message that the disc is read only and files cannot be deleted? Can anyone please help me out? Thanks.

You should try to format a CDRW if you want to drag and drop files to it and be able to delete them. It is using a "packet writing" software like Nero InCD, or Roxio's Easy CD Creator. Incase you want to use a CDRW disk to burn data to like a CDR disk then no, you dont need to format it, infact doing so will make your burning software refuse to operate because the disk will not be empty. The formatting process will make the disk unburnable until you erase it.

You have to completely erase the RW CDs before they can be reused. When you insert the CD, a little window should pop-up in the center of your screen saying that it detects whatever files are on your cd, then under that a list of choices of what you want to do. Scroll down until the bottom and you will see "Open folder to view files". Double click that and the contents of your CD will be displayed. Incase you didnt change any settings, there should be a blue vertical pane on the left of the window. Under the "CD tasks" section, there should be an option called "erase this disk" or something like that. Please keep in mind that only if you insert an RW disk then that will appear. So you click on that and a wizard for erasing disks will pop up. Follow the instructions from there.

Thanks for the replies guys, I will check out the issue and report back if its working or not.