WinXP and Nero

I'm hoping someone here can help me rectify this headache... it's a beauty:

Installing Nero on my WinXP machine "breaks" both CD-ROM's (one DVD and one CD-RW). They become inaccessable and the properties in the device manage says something to the effect that "this device has a problem because necessary install information in the registry is damaged or incomplete". I'm paraphrasing but I'm sure you get the idea. It's definitely installing Nero that causes this. It appears to be making some change in these device's registry settings that XP doesn't like. Even uninstalling Nero doesn't fix this... I have to roll the system back with System Restore. I've tried uninstalling and re-installing the drives as well as installing Nero in safe mode... notta. I know XP has a built-in CD burning capability, but I need the ability to burn a disk from an image and I don't think XP supports this. The last thing in the world I want to do is dump Nero for EZ CD Creator (especially since I already have a licence for the former and I'd have to purchase the latter), so I'm really hoping I can get this ironed out.

Any ideas?

BTW, I have an Abit BE6-II motherboard w/ the HPT366 IDE controller. The CD-ROMs are master and slave on the "regular" primary channel.

No ideas, but I have installed Nero on at least 5 different XP installs of both Server and Pro with no problems.

That doesn't surprise me in the least. I never really meant to imply that I thought there was a compatibility issue between Nero and WinXP. All along I've kind of assumed it probably has something to do with my particular configuration. I'm just hoping someone out there may at least have an idea as far as what the problem might be because right now I'm totally clueless.

what version of nero are you using?

5.5.5.1, but that wasn't the issue. I have solved the problem. I ran across the following article in Microsoft's Knowledgebase that describes my exact problem, only stemming from Adaptec's Easy CD Creator:

<a href="http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q270/0/08.ASP" target="_blank">http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q270/0/08.ASP</a>

I was actually quite encouraged by the last paragraph:

"NOTE: There may be other third party CD-Writing Software that exhibit similar behavior. Some or all of these troubleshooting steps could apply to them if they also add entries under the UpperFilters or LowerFilters registry values by either adding their filter drivers or by removing the registry keys and values outlined in this article that begin with:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}"

I decided to give it a try, so I created a checkpoint in System Restore, re-installed Nero, uninstalled my CD-ROM's, then employed the registry fix detailed in that article. I then re-installed my drives and now everything is working like a charm.