I reinstalled(a newer cakewalk) but "waves plugins' arernt in the list of plugins. Waves is absent.. HOWEVER, they are working... I still see their names listed on each track and I HEAR them working too . I just cant access them from a list anymore. Its weird that they work but arent listed. Any way around this, rather than reinstalling waves?

They are probably listed, but something else is actually making the noise.
Go to Tools>Plug-in Manager and add the file location of the Waves .dll to the list of files to be scanned by the VST scanner, then click scan.