michael:
Does you ROM drive have a caddy? I have had this problem once in a
while it was the slide on the caddy getting stuck or you might want
clean you disk with a CD cleaning kit. If you not sure if the disk is
reading log on to it from DOS before starting 3DS this is alot
quicker them restarting 3d Studio. Sorry about the repeat I didn't
read all the thread I guess the Mscdex problem was bugging me a long
time ago when I was setting up Qemm on my computer and it would miss
the CD every other time I ran optimize.