Just been having another look into System/Device Manager, and this time I clicked the option for "view devices by connection".

Clicking on PCI Bus opens up "Via Bus Master PCI IDE controller", and this opens up two further icons - "Primary IDE controller (dual fifo) and Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)". The Primary controller opens up to give Generic IDE Disc Type 46, and the Secondary controller opens up to give Generic IDE Disc Type 80 and LG CD-RW CED-8080B.

When I click on Properties for boith the IDE discs the screen that pops up declares in both cases that "this device is working properly". But there's no way of accessing the second disc from within Windows so far as I can see. Most frustrating. And the CD-Rom Disc is still labelled as Drive D, whereas before the reinstall it was Drive E, with the second hard disc as Drive D.

I was wondering whether there's anything useful to be done via System Information under System Tools?