Bless you my son. Your advice worked when nothing else did. I deleted all references to 'Roxio' out of my registry, uninstalled the device driver for my CD/DVD, rebooted, checked the device manager; and Wah-Lah, there it was; all nice and installed.
Much love to my fellow geeks out there that are willing to share their knowledge and experience to help out. You make the world a better place.
~LC