Maybe i can put a little better info into this...
XP has a known issue about using Flash Drives and having too many drives in your system already. For some reason when a flash drive is installed and windows should give it a letter designation of "G" or above, it gets screwy and either doesn't show it at all or will change icons and designate different letters to it and cause a lock up. The most common error is the drive not showing at all.
The work around this is to remove all the temp (flash drives) and then re letter your optical drives to a higher letter such as "x" then "Y" working backwards in the alphabet.
to change the letter designations of a drive:
1.Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.2.Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance. 3.Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.4.Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.5.Click Change.6.Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK. 7.Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.The drive letter of the drive, the partition, or the volume that you specified is changed, and the new drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.