Noel Paton wrote:

(not enough caffeine! - thanks for the heads-up, Glen! - I didn't read
beyond the first sig)

It's still worth checking - since if there are duplications further up the
line (i.e. the IDE controllers), then the CD could be re-duplicated on the
reinstall.

In another thread, the Safe mode enabled gave me a new problem, so I
hate to enable it again if not really needed.

IMO duplicates are not the issue due to the mode of malfunction.

The CD drives worked fine for years. In the same morning while being
used normally, they stopped working. Nothing else was changing at that
time- nothing installed, in fact I rebooted before making a new CD copy,
so very few things were running.

MS