>Happy New Year Folks.
>
>My CD drive has recently decided not to recognise any proprietory disc, i.e. any software or games disc. OTOH any disc that has info burned onto it domestically, such as backups, copies of prop. s/w discs, is readable.
>
>Any attempt to explore a prop. disc results in a dialog: "Please insert disc in drive d:" with a cancel button (note no Retry button).

At first glance, looks like it might be DRM gone bad.

Have you installed any *new* games or prop. software lately that required a click-through EULA agreement? Try uninstalling to see if that helps.

Some music CDs do this too - e.g. the famous Sony "rootkit" issue: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sonys_drm_rootk.html