I have an unusual problem. After starting up my pc, the first floppy disk that is put in works fine. Explorer lists the correct files and access to any/all of them works fine. If I remove this disk and put in another, explorer shows it to have the same contents as the first disk. This occurs regardless of whether the second disk is blank or full - it shows that it has what the first disk had. On any of these subsequent disks, if I try to open one of the ghost files displayed in explorer it will actually open fine - even though it is not really on that disk.
I've never heard or seen this problem before - any suggestions?

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Are you refreshing the view on the floppy disk?? It will not show the new files until you do usually. I am not sure how it could be opening a file that it can't access, that is really odd. Someone else may be able to say more about that....

I tried this just to see what would happen.
Used a Windows 98 Startup disk and a blank floppy.
Read the startup disk and it lists the files.
Removed the Startup disk and put the blank floppy in and do not "View>Refresh".
[So it is not showing what is actually on this floppy, but what was on the last one it read.]
Right-click on the "Readme.txt" file and "Send To" Wordpad.
[I have a shortcut to "Wordpad.exe" in my "Send To" folder.]
Wordpad opens and tries to read the file, but fails.
No surprise there since there is no file to read.

I don't see how any application can read a file that is not there.

i had already tried "refreshing" and have even completely closed explorer and re-opened it with the same results. The only way to get what is on a floppy is for it to be the first one put in since the last cold boot. All subsequent disks show the same contents as the first. I have also tried this with the first disk being a blank, freshly formatted disk. This makes all subsequent disks show as blank.
By the way, when the first disk is first put in, the drive is active for an abnormally long time, and i presume that it is reading the contents of the disk to some kind of buffer which may be why subsequent disks can still open files from the previous disk even though the file is not actually on the current disk.
Bizarre problem.
i'm open to ideas.

Try replacing your floppy cable (sounds like you lost the disk change interupt which would be pin 34 on FDD cable).
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Win2000/Q_20248990.html

Installing the demo version of Dreamweaver has also been implicated in this problem.
http://forums.devshed.com/t30551/s.html