This is probably going to sounds incredibly stupid...

With 9x and Me I could go into the device manger, right click on a device, pull up the properties and tweak with it a bit. I need to change the setting for a few of my drives (turn auto-insert notifcation off, turn on DMA etc etc) but I can't seem to figure out how to do this with XP. When I try the steps I just mentioned I get nuthin of the sort like I used to. I know this can be done, I see people talking about doing it all the time. Can someone tell my retarded self how to tweak this stuff? Thanks.

Goto system click hardware tap you will see the device manger there
And also everthing you what to do will be under System and in some tap there will be opition at top of the menu to setup.

well see i can get into device manager and i can pull up the properties but i no longer have the option of changing any device settings.. all i get is 'general' 'properties' 'volume' and 'driver' and under properties if it's a cd drive i just have the option to mess with the sound settings. in the case of my hd instead of properties i have 'policies' but everything is grey and i can't change it.. i'm the only user and i have admins privs so i can't rightfully understand why i wouldn't be able to do anything

The available settings depend upon the device. Not all devices have settings. As far as the dma setting for the drives, this was moved to the individual ide channels under ide controllers.