USB HDDs and stick drives not seen in ATI 2009? This worked for me

I realised a few days after installing ATI 2009 from the CD (followed by the 9770 updater) that Win XP SP3 was no longer allocating drive letters to USB HDDs and stick drives - though, oddly, FireWire drives were seen normally. However, this realisation was so long after the installation that I didn't associate ATI 2009 with the problem.

Today, though, after very many days and hours messing around with the system - and a whole lot of Googling - I finally made the connection, in part because of this thread on the now-closed Wilders' forum: http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=243811

The fix that worked for me was to uninstall ATI 2009 - then after a reboot, as a belt-and-braces job, run the official Cleanup utility: http://kb.acronis.com/content/1727

Finally, I installed the 9770 updater - and rebooted - and discovered, to my relief, that stick drives and other external USB drives were once again being recognised and given drive letters by Windows.

Hoping this might help others "get out of jail".

By the way, am I missing something about these new forums? I can't find any way to do a search (hence, no apology in case that this topic has been posted here before).

Bob Crabtree