I have just discovered that although my drives are working they are unmounted. I can see them in System Setting as disabled and they do not appear in Dolphin. I tried following this advice from the "manual"

Mount CD/DVD-ROMs and show all hidden and associated files

1.

Assuming that /media/cdrom0/ is the location of CD/DVD-ROM
2.

To mount CD/DVD-ROM

sudo mount /media/cdrom0/ -o unhide

but that hasn't made any difference, any ideas?
I hate feeling so useless in this new environment when I was a bit of a champion with xp, but I go to be a champion by learning through all my mistakes so bring it on!

Did you have a data disk in the drive? You can't mount a drive if there is no disk, also a media disk doesn't get mounted.