Been using EAC for quite a while now, and i've never encountered this problem.

Just fired it up on this re-install for the first time, and it detected my cdroms fine - only Alchohol 120%'s virtual drive was detected instead of my CDRW .. now, this wouldn't worry me if i could work out how to get EAC to re-read my drives, but atm i'm just seeing my 40x cdrom and a virtual drive

any ideas?

try to use an external aspi layer. I use the one (wnaspi32.dll) in Nero

Get the Nero Aspi DLL from Nero's download page (www.ahead.de)
Toss it in your EAC directory and in preferences change to "installed external ASPI interface".

Read the tutorial on how to install EAC.

I meant to refer you to a specific thread on this subject on EAC's official forum at Digital-Inn, but the server does not seem to be working now.
You might want to try later (link to the forum is on www.exactaudiocopy.de)

I've heard positive feedback about these two ASPI drivers regarding compatibility and stability, either of which would hopefully solve a drive recognition problem.

Edit: I haven't used Nero's ASPI driver, but since people say it works well it's probably just as good of a solution as these are...

Adaptec ASPI driver

VOB ASAPI driver (This is the one I use, never had a problem.)

thanks for the suggestions everyone!
i just copied across WNASPI32.DLL from my nero directory, and all is working now