Cannot remove "safely remove hardware" icon by clock

[Guest]

A "safely remove hardware" pop-up appears everytime I start up XP and will
not remove itself. My mother accidently loaded some older software that XP
did not recognize and attached the wrong drivers to the software. It
originally removed my combined DVD/CDRW drive (laptop). I have since
restored it and have the drive functioning properly. The DVD/CDRW drive has
seven drivers attached to it to which the "safely remove hardware" pop-up is
not loading 2 of the 7 drivers as it has determined that it would cause my
computer to become unstable. When I have the pop up remove the driver, it
removes everything and then I have no DVD?CDRW drive again. If I go and
manually remove only the 2 bad drivers out of the seven drivers, it still
removes my DVD?CDRW drive. All of my external drives are functioning
normally as I have tested them. No matter what I try, I cannot get rid of
the "safely remove hardware" pop up. I have removed all software relating to
these 2 non-recogized drivers, even in the registry. If anyone can tell me
how to make this pop-up (then when you close, it remains a permanent icon) -
icon go away it would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

[Glen]

Do a system restore to a time before your Mom loaded the destructive
software.

 

[Guest]

Yeah Glen, I was afraid you were going to tell me that, that is how I got my
DVD/CDRW drive back, but I only had to restore just a few days back. It is
her computer and she loaded this old software on 12-28-04. I suppose I will
try, and if I do not like what I see I can always go back to what I have,
thanks for your help.