Add New Hardware in WIN ME- system crash

Due to a recent hard drive crash – I have reinstalled win ME. Everything seems to work fine until I attempt to access the “ADD HARDWARE” feature in the Control Panel. When it attempts to search for the new hardware I get the following Blue Screen Error: “HSFLOP (03) + 00002872 Error: OE : 0028 : C18694A2”.
although is says “to return to windows press enter, it never does and I have to reboot. I have never run into this problem before (and I have reinstalled Fresh installed WIN ME 3 times in the past 6 months due to Drive crash. offending drive has been removed and replaced. Any Ideas?