Seems a lot of people are having the same problem. I can't answer your question as to why your Vista won't show all the folders on the CD, I would suspect the media and the program used to write to the CD's I used Nero burning rom for all my pictures and have had no trouble going from WIN 98 to XP and to Vista. My old Nero program is not compatible with Vista so I now am using "Burnaware free version" with "Verbatim" media. I find that when I burn with this program and media, the CD/DVDs work on all other OS's, whereas a CD burned with the Vista software (ie: in multisession) would not show all folders on my XP machine.
I can point you to a free program so you can extract the pictures from the CD .
License models for IsoBuster and Freeware vs. Shareware policy
Read the page carefully so you know what the free function will do. Every once in a while a nag screen will pop up to purchase, just ignore it if you wish.
Good luck. Please let us know how you make out.