DVD and PB external drive stops

Hi
I have a Pakard Bell iXtreme desktop PC, which has vista pre installed, with installation info on hidden partition. Included was a Save and Store 2500 external drive, a DVD rw, all worked fine, after about 6 months I started receiving i/o errors and the external drive basically stopped working, I did post here and tried to get tech advise, unfortunately the PC was purchased from PCWorld, so a big no there, and no info here helped so I gave up and started backing up on DVD's. During that time Microshaft were releasing Vista upgrades and on doing a full re install it worked again for a short time. After about a year my DVDrw would occasionally not read a blank disk and I would have to reinsert it a few times to be recognised, eventually it would not read any disks apart from Pre produced shop bought disks, not any of my back up disks ,, again I tried tech support and internet search's with no luck. I was advised from here to purchase a new DVDrw as they are relatively inexpensive which I did. The new DVDrw worked for around 3 months and then began displaying the same problems as the old one. Microshaft are blaming Pakard Bell and vice versa. I did call Pakard Bell support (expensive), they advised that they no longer provide any kind of support or even drivers for these products!!! On searching for the DVDrw driver, (Liteon Atapi iHap 122 9ata), the only results I get are for 3rd party software that updates everydriver on your PC, we all know those sites. I have today reinstalled my complete PakardBell PC and Vista and the DVDrw is not recognising blank disks from the outset and the External Drive is receiving the i/o error , is there anyone who can point me in the right direction,
I cannot afford to replace my devices or buy tech support but will try anything.
I have deleted the upper and lower filters in the registry and am at the moment upgrading vista with its million patch's and ServicePacks!
Many thanks to all