Ok, I cannot work out why, but my entire lappy's hard drive has gone read only on my ass. However, its on the read only setting where (using XP) the checkbox is shaded in instead of ticked, which means that I can edit files, but not copy them from CDs. I can download stuff and save files through other programs, bu this is a pain all the same. Any ideas?

buy a new computer?

it is a new computer...

ok, so its mostly worked out. turned out that quite a few of my RW cd's got corrupted somewhere along the way. and that sucks. so, anyways, thats thats :)