No go with CD-ROM

Two different Mac Minis cannot read a CD-ROM. I put the disc into my LG external optical drive several times. Only once did the icon of the CD appear on my Desktop of my own Mini. I could not open the icon, and I could not drag it over to the destination on a server.

Every other time the CD-ROM did not appear on the Desktop. Nor does it appear in Locations.

I do not have any problem reading a PDF on a CD-ROM with this LG drive. The icon of the file appears on the Desktop, and the drive appears in Locations.

We had to attach the external optical drive to a Microsoft machine. That Microsoft computer opened the file on the CD-ROM just fine.

I cannot tell from the Microsoft machine what kind of encoding is in the file on the CD-ROM. The file has an application and several documents. The application is something entitled "Autorun." I am guessing that that application is something to be used to look at the documents in the file. I have not got that far. I want to transfer everything on the CD-ROM to our preferred destination folder. The Microsoft users on the network would then use Autorun, while we Mac users would use something else.

I have tried restarting my Mini. I tried Disk Utility and System Preference and Finder Preference. None provided any help in reading the file on this particular CD-ROM.

Does anyone have any further guesses as to how to get such a CD-ROM file to appear in my Mac?