Thanks Oscar999,
I have a removable USB memory drive which had set its unreadable self up as drive E: and appeared so in Disk Management. I was able to see its contents only once after uninstalling, reinstalling, etc.
On the machine there is already an existing E: network shared directory which was confusing XP, so I was able to use the Change Drive and Paths... option to change it to drive R: for Removable.
It can now be explored. Yey!