How can the CD play in every other program (ie: winamp, mediaplayer, musicmatch) but can not be read in EAC?
Because those other applications simply play the audio portion of the CD. They send an MMC command to the drive which is essentially the same as pressing "play" on a consumer CD player. The audio comes out the analog audio outputs from the CD drive and don't even get involved with the OS at all.
EAC on the other hand, wants to digitally rip the CD and needs lower-level access to the drive, using more complex commands. There's something preventing EAC from doing that. I don't know what, but that's where you need to start looking for the trouble. It could be as simple as a misconfigured EAC (try another ripper program and see if you get the same problem). Or it could be complicated, for instance, the drive might be running in 16-bit "compatibility mode" (check the "performance" tab of ControlPanel/System). Or maybe something in between, like it needs an ASPI driver before it'll work. Dunno.