Good morning to you Leonard, how are you today ? 

 LE> Boot into Safe mode, and then go into Device manager and delete the
 LE> IDE stuff (and any other stuff that you no longer have in the system).

 LE> Then reboot. Windows doesn't actually *remove* the drivers if you just
 LE> pull the hardware or even if you remove the device after a normal
 LE> boot. You have to do it in safe mode.

        These lines of wisdom have been dumped to the printer for
        safekeeping. In the mean time, I was able to regain my CD device
        with a redo of the OS. I was due for one anyway.

        Thanks for precise instructions.

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