I have a Packard bell easynote its a couple of years old with XP home, and I bought an external CD Drive thats Plug n play, plugged it in, and the laptop recognized it but said "Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)" what can I do?? i've tried all my USB ports but to no avail!! SO it Doesnt show up in my computer, is there at least any other way i can get to it, or even better fix it??

Please Help!!!

Do a repair install of windows, might fix the problem.

How do i do that??

Here is a guide on how to do a repair install of windows xp.

A Repair Install is a rather drastic approach without further diagnosing.

This symptom does not indicate a corrupted Operating System at first glance.

Can you see the drive in Disk Management?

Right click My Computer then click Properties then Manage then Disk Management.

If the disk is there then you should be able to access it from there.

The fact that there is no icon under My Computer is a common issue with many different reasons. Do you have Tweak UI installed? If so check your Auto Play options in regard to that particular drive.