Sounds suspiciously like a friend of mine who I try to help out...
Using a fairly 'hot' and OK machine, he went from 98se to XP...
Loads of problems recognizing the mere existence of material on his CDs... Even things as plain and simple as .zip files.
Did the smart thing and blew out XP for 2000 Professional but, same problem.
He installed a new CD-ROM drive with the appropriate drivers and all problems gone. Then spent about 3 months trying to find the correct drivers for his old CD drive.
btw, Peerless, this guy also does tons of music-making/creation stuff on his machine and went through the same problems as you have with the files being 'invisible'.
c u |