Okay I have a puter running XP Pro. It has a cd-burner F and a cd-rom E.

In My computer the F drive is no longer visible and when you put a disc into the E drive strange things happen. First it shows the name of the disc as strange characters. Instead of "disc 1" it had [d "then two squares" c 1]. When you try to access the disc it asks you to insert a disc even though there is one already in there. It also at one stage detected new hardware but the h'ware wizard in the taskbar listed the new device with strange characters again like this.

Found New hardware
>><>>>><>>>>>>

Im suspecting maybe a faulty IDE cable especially if they are both on the same one, but cant check yet as they are flat out doing their end of Fiscal year stuff and want to get that done first.

Any thoughts on what else it could be???