Hi... i'm at the point of being desperate. I am having a birthday party next weekend and there will be 40 guests. I have promised my son that inside each "goodie bag" i'll put a burned CD (all his favorite songs for his friends) however, today, when trying to do this, neither of my drives was recognizing the cd's i'm trying to rip. Even more odd is that when I go to My Computer and click on each drive, D drive tells me to please insert a cd and E drives locks me up for about 6 minutes before shutting down the My Computer window. I haven't had any problems before ripping or burning cd's so what gives? I have 3 kids and they sneak onto my computer when i'm not at home so, yes, there could have been something done that I am not aware of to change something, somewhere that has caused this. But I thought/think i've covered my bases and checked everything and I believe that my settings are right.
I use media player and i'm running xp.
Please help asap.

I'm no windows expert but isn't there something like a hardware manager or something? I'd start there and examine the info and setting for the drives.

maybe your drivers are outa date

public understands.Windows to integer=1
first of all, drivers.
open Start and right click my computer, select Manage, devices, open device manager. select the drives and go to troubleshootinghit the rollback drivers button. if it errors out, check the irq (last tab on the right) if it conflicts with anything (other drive?). also, check the first tab on the left to see if anything pops out.
secondly, kids.
check the event log to see if anything pops out, or post it if you don't understand. sit your kids down and ask them if they did anything to break it.
thirdly, windows.
do a repair install
fourthwith, hardware.
take the drives to a computer shop and get them to fix them, or replace them.
hope this helps!