Vista - Uninstalling all USB devices, ports, etc

I'm still having no luck with my mp3 player, even after installing firmware
(via my old XP machine) to turn it into a USB flash drive so that I could
drag and drop files. I can drag, but they never drop. I also have four
phantom drives that appeared when I moved my external drive from one port to
another. (I'm at the point where I'll try anything - I love this player, and
my external drive is getting grumpy about being switched back and forth
between the two machines.)

The Windows 'Tips & Tricks' article on phantom drives (I'm sorry - I don't
have the reference handy, but it's all over the boards) suggests brute
uninstall from the device manager, but this isn't working in Vista. I safely
remove all my USB devices, but when I start to uninstall in Device Manager,
Vista helpfully reinstalls faster than I can uninstall. Can I/should I turn
off Plug & Play? Or is there more that I need to do?