Thanks for the tips! What has happened since my last post is I went to Microsoft's site and installed every update that looked remotely related.
I no longer have the yellow "!" by my device. It shows up in Device Manager as a Mass Storage Device under they USB Controllers. It says it is working and that no driver updates are needed. However, it still does not have a drive letter and Nero won't recognize it.

I did install the chipset update as you suggested. I have not tinkered with the registry. Not sure where to begin. In the meantime, I have bought an inexpensive Iomgega burner that's much slower, but should do me until I upgrade from 98se to Windows ME. I saw a flash BIOS update at the Dell update site, I'm not sure if this is relevant.

Thanks again!