dynex dx-ecdrw100 not recognized by windows?!?

[confus-ed]

If the drive shows up in device manager and can write using musicmatch, then I doubt the problem is with windows ..

From what I can gather thoroughlyfedup (nice name btw ! ) besides being their name, has lots of bits of burning software ? In which case I'd like to thoroughly disagree with you & say this sounds like exactly the kind of thing windows would cause !

So this unit appears to be one of these ? & I guess since something (musicmatch) can 'see' it we can assume (for now, as I don't like assuming) we have some working USB connection .. so my money would be on errant 'filter drivers' - filter drivers are class objects which allow windoze to use extra funcionality of a device without changing the core driver for everything, so for example a filter driver might add writing function to a cdr's driver set, but not any cd roms etc ... these regularly 'get mussed up' on many systems, & its caused by folks who write individual class filters not being able to anticipate what someone else might write for theirs, so very often they conflict, & you can get symptoms like here (its very common & increasingly so as folks itroduce more & more combinations of writing software)

There's a tool you can use for NT systems here to see if you have any filter drivers installed, but it won't work with 98 sadly, & all I can suggest is removing every bit of writing software you've got & see if it helps ? (then reintroduce them one at a time, testing as you go)