ok, first off never mind the last post, i did delete gear systems and it did screw things up but i went ahead and redownloaded it from the gearsystems site so now my computer is actually recognizing the drive again.

as for deleting the upperfilters/lowerfilters,

...how do i do that? what is a registry key, how do i access it? or perhaps i didnt find the correct link in the sticky and i am looking in the wrong place??
i figured out how to do that (run, regedit, etc.) but when i get to the registry key it doesnt show any lowerfilters, just upperfilters.
i havent deleted them yet because i am scared to f around with the registry...