Hamish –

I've about exhausted my list of creative suggestions for this one. Deleting an existing device in Device Manager, and installing (re-installing) from scratch should always work. (It said so in a book I used to have, I think. I know my memory's good, 'cause I can remember lots of things that never even happened.)

WinME is sort of a strange OS, and I skipped over it and went straight from Win98SE to Win2K and WinXP. Consensus in the tech channels is that almost anything is better than WinME, but of course that's just gossip.

About the only difference I've found documented between Win98SE and WinME is that both were designed to use drivers that work through the OS "protection layer." Win98SE retained a fall-back support for "real mode" drivers – for devices that are accessed directly by programs. Real mode support was removed completely in WinME so that all device access goes through Windows. That really shouldn't be a visible difference for users, since you always want the driver that's meant for the device and for the OS you're using, and WinME drivers should be plentiful by now.

Your Plan (f) may be the right one for you to use now.

Even if you don't plan to do anything more about the CD drive now, you may want to visit and bookmark the Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition: OS-Specific Help Site.

WinME and older Microsoft OS have been threatened with "non-support" for some time now, but there have been occasional "extensions" of support of some kinds. This link is where you'd look to find out what the support status is for WinME, and to get whatever updates and (especially) security fixes are new for it. (Win98SE users could look here too, although there may be a similar Win98-specific site as well.) There are also links in the sidebar to info on common problems, although the emphasis now has shifted to the security patches. "Hardware and Software" might be a good one to browse if/when you decide to get back to the CD problem, or when something new pops up.

John