My CD burner (HP CD Writer cd16v) and DVD drive (IDE DVD-ROM 16X) won't show up in My Computer, only in Device Manager. In device manager, the icons have little !'s next to them. Turns out there's a faulty driver (C:\WINDOWS\System32\drivers\Cdralw2k.sys) that was installed by a version of Easy CD Creator (4, I think) that doesn't work with XP. Now, I uninstalled Easy CD Creator, and I keep getting this error when I start up that tells me that the drivers were prevented from loading to keep Windows from being unstable. It suggests that I update them, but the update page just tells me to buy a new Easy CD Creator. I can't roll back the drivers since I deleted all my system restore points to get rid of that new worm, and I can't see the drives anyway, so... can I just delete the bad drivers?

It would be better for you to update the drivers. You don't have to use Roxio. You can use Nero instead. Look for it at driverguide.com Login is drivers, password is all. You might also be able to find Nero at Download.com. If all else fails do a search on Google for Nero. You are bound to find something that will work with those drives.

Okay, the computer calls these drivers "CD burning software" in the error balloon, but the same driver is on both my CD burner and my DVD drive. I can't replace it with another CD burning driver on the DVD drive, because the DVD drive can't burn CDs. Again, did the drivers replace something, or can I just delete them? In theory, deleting the drivers that don't work would leave all-working drivers, and would make the drive work. I'm not sure if it would work that way in reality though.

Can anybody help me?