I'm not sure what is going on. I have a CD Burner and a DVD Rom...2 seperate Devices. I pretty much only use my CD Burner for burning CD's but I do have a few games installed through that drive. All of my other games are installed through my DVD drive.

Now, here's the problem or problems. Sometimes the drives won't read the disks....and these are factory disks...not copies. Other times they will read the disks with no problem, but when I take the game out and put another game in, I get the message that I need to put the CD in the drive. When I check in Windows Explorer it says that the first game is still in the drive. It will not read the next game until I reboot the PC.

Any ideas what is going on?

When you remove the disk from the drive.
Try having windows eject the disk.
Even if you have to open explorer to get it to open /eject the disk

This should clear the cache and force windows to read the new disk,.

Only to add, that may also be because you are running so many processes, perhaps your computer system's process schedulling also a cause for that...If that process you doesn't need anymore, just use some software to abruptly terminate the process or Ctrl-Alt Del to wake up the task manager and from there just hit the one you like...Thats the brute-force approach I belive, have fun and good luck!

Just an idea for what is going on,...