We have a Ricoh CD rewriter for the PC.  However Windows ME recognises
Data CDs to be Audio CDs and when we put actual Audio CDs in the drive
it refuses to read them.  Data CDs show up as having 1 audio track, it
has previously worked fine, the settings appear to be normal.  Can
anyone suggest anything to remedy this please?

i don't have an answer for you, so i'll state that right up front,
however, i don't think that ricoh, is still in the cd burner/re-writer
business, so it may not support any future operating
system(me,xp,2k.etc.) We have had one at work for a while, and it
seems flakey at best. cd/cd-rw burners are cheap as dirt at this point
in the market. That being said, if you have data burned with one of
those and a 'current' updated machine cannot read the data, i suggest
you put it back(re-install)into an older machine with an older
o/s(win95/98) get the data off of the cd(s) it created, then transfer
it to a common drive(x,network drive what have you) and burn it with a
more current burner. Hope this comment helps. Good luck

It sounds like you do not have an application associated with playing
your cd automatically. If you were to open any audio cd you would be
presented with the files you describe. In order to fix this all you
have to do is goto your favourite cd player and select the appropriate
settings. For example in media player you would simply associate it
with a cd audio track.
Hope this helps

Try downloading a CD-player software (i.e. Winamp - www.winamp.com)and
installing it.

It sounds as though your file associations have been corrupted and
short of a registry rebuild or manual association (not hard - but many
steps), a "fresh" install of a program that will attemtp to create the
associations will help.

It's very unlikely that it's a hardware problem, as this is not
typical of mechanical failure (it would more likely not show the disk
at all).  It sounds like somehow or another you PC is confused as to
what it should do with the disk.  A new program for CD-music is the
easiest way to go.