Multiple Firewire Burners on XP Pro

Scenario:

Clean system, new install on formatted drive.
IDE Primary master HDD
IDE Secondary master CD-ROM <-- install from here
Firewire card
4 x External Firewire CDRW drives, daisychained and connected to 1 port
on firewire

Install from WinXP Pro SP1a OEM CD
--> after rebooting, only 3 of the CDRW drives come online,
2nd last in chain (always this position) fails to initialize
with 'Device cannot start, code 10'

Install from WinXP Pro MSDN CD
--> no problems!!

Install from WinXP Pro Corp. Edition CD
--> no problems!!

No, it isn't the drives, or the IDE-FW paddles, or the FW cables, or the FW
card, or the MB. (all have been intependantly swapped out and substituted
with known working devices/leads). I have now installed XP nearly 20 times,
and tried every combination each way.

There are no 3rd party drivers installed. Everything is coming from a
Windows CD.

The problem occurs after restarting the PC. If you install, then attach the
burners 1 at a time, all 4 are operable until you restart. Restart and only
3 come up.

Does anyone have any clues???

Best regards,
Trevor Morris
Data Storage Solutions