On a Sony Viao laptop (running XP Home) a friend had several files and folders which he copied over to CD using the in-built writer. Several files/folders were copied over with no problem. Then he tried to copy over several more onto a different CD in the same way. He said he'd followed the same procedure, but that this time the CD turned up blank and nothing was copied across.
Now the original files/folders on the hard drive of the laptop which he tried to copy over are corrupt. Many are Word files and many are JPEG files.

When I try to open up the original Word files on the hard drive they appear as small rectangular blocks or just letter Y's. I tried opening up a JPEG file in Photoshop Elements but it said "Could not open file such-and-such because a JPEG marker segment is too short (the file may be truncated or incomplete)."

I've tried repairing the Word files using DocRepair and also with EasyRecovery Professional but after the recovery process the files are blank/empty.

In the process of copying something must have happened so that the original files can now no longer be opened. Is there anything I can try to recover thhem all? All their "sizes" seem to be normal but they just can't be opened. I've tried copying them again onto a different CD and trying to open them on my PC but they still don't work. I've also tried checking for viruses but there are none detected.

Any suggestions please?