So, after what should've been a simple restart, my two optical drives as well as my ethernet card seemed to have gone kaput. I replaced the ethernet card and everything's great with that, but the optical drives aren't wholly recognized by the system. They appear in my Device Manager, both showing a code 39. They aren't assigned a drive letter through My Computer. I replaced BOTH optical drives with new ones, and I continue to get the code 39 error through Device Manager; clearly there's some other problem I haven't solved. Any ideas?

Did you "remove " the drives in devicemamager as well as replacing the hardware? Possible the drivers have become corrupted. Try that and reboot to let windows reinstal drivers. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and his wife will never forgive you.

Thanks for the tip, but I kinda figured it out. Thankfully it only took about half an hour from start to finish, or else tomorrow I would've torn out the motherboard assuming it went bad and drowned my sorrows in a couple (or 6) beers .. Strangely, everything on the web I've found regarding this similar issue said that it arose from installing or uninstalling cd software like DirectCD or Easy CD Creator. I haven't touched that software in ages, so I was convinced my problem was unique. Maybe that software's a ticking time bomb, and mine just went off; who knows. Suffice it to say, I followed the easy Registry Edit procedure at the Microsoft website, and everything for now seems a go. For anyone else having this issue, here's the link I used: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q314060/ After the reboot, everything works great. One quick note about the microsoft site that I ALMOST did .. not sure if it's because I was hasty or my comprehension skills really are out of whack tonight .. it gives you the path to find the UpperFilter and LowerFilter in the Registry, and when you follow that path the next step just says to delete. MAKE SURE you're only deleting the Upper and LowerFilter keys, and not the entire folder (I'm not sure what it'd do, but my vivid imagination draws a grim picture) Thanks a lot for everyone publishing their troubleshoots; they really help!

and ps, to post an addendum to your signature: "Give a man a fish, and he knows where to go for fish. Teach that man to fish, and you've just destroyed your entire market base."