DVD RW drive giving code 10

I am running Vista and bought a Verbatim USB 1TB External Hard Drive. The HD and the DVD burner worked fine together for a while,but now for some reason it changed the drive letter on the DVD from E: to K:(when HD hooked up) and J: when the HD is not hooked up. It is labeled as a DVD Drive J:, but under type it says cd drive. When I go to Device Manager it says "his device cannot start. (Code 10)" It says the drivers are the latest, when I check for updates. The DVD burner came in the HP computer I use for HTPC. It says TSSTCorp. CD/DVDW TS-H652M ATA device. When I try to use Roxio to burn data discs, it doesn't see the drive and says no drive detected..

Any ideas? I've tried disabling all my card readers and all other items with a drive letter. It still stays at j: or K: I have a coupe of virtual drive, but I think I got rid of them also.

I suggest assigning permanent drive letters...to each of your removable devices...starting from the end of the alphabet.

Each time that a removable device is attached, XP does a roll count. If the drive letter reflected on that drive (previously) has now been assigned to a connected drive...XP will now assign the next letter that is deemed to be free.

So, if any user starts from the end of the alphabet, none of those letters will be viewed as assigned...and XP should allow the letter assigned to stand. A drive designated Z should always be seen as Z, and so on.

I use this system with my hard drives also.

FWIW: The C: drive will always be C:, while the D: drive should be the optical drive...which should have been the only other drive installed on that system when XP was initially installed.

As for the DVD drive...http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/929461. This is a pretty standard situation many of us have found ourselves contronted with (it is not restricted to Vista).

Note that the solution involves a registry edit...take all normal precautions when preparing to make such, including backing up your registry by using a tool such as ERUNT Registry Backup Tool - http://www.snapfiles.com/get/erunt.html

Louis