Explorer can see CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive but can't boot from it nor install s/w from it

Explorer in Parallels Win XP can see my DVD/Blu-ray drive but Parallels can't boot from it and I've had trouble launching installers from it, including the initial installation of Win XP itself. The workaround was to copy the CD contents (eg. the Windows XP installation disc) on to the local hard-drive and execute installations from that - but then I wanted to directly play DVDs and blu-rays in Win XP and burn them from Win XP.

I'm running Windows XP using Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac, installed on a MacBook Pro Retina running OSX 10.8.3. The disc drive I am using is a portable external blu-ray drive - Pioneer BD-RW BDR-XD04.

I've seen various posts from people saying that Parallels can't see their CD/DVD drive, but the solutions proposed didn't work for me. The main one (which is still necessary to do) was to go to Configure and then CD/DVD and tick Connected and select the correct name of the CD/DVD drive (or select "Default CD/VDVD").

This didn't work for me. It warns that it wouldn't apply it until I rebooted Parallels but each time I rebooted, it said it failed to connect to the drive, giving the error during boot of Win XP: "Unable to connect CD/DVD 1". Annoyingly it could 'HALF' see it, as Explorer would then show the contents of discs without any trouble.

BUT I found a solution. Hope this may be helpful to others and so am posting it here! Not sure if applies to other external drives too, but it may. Problem seemed to be that the drive wasn't 'fully' 'accepted' by the Mac OS. I checked: Apple icon (very top left of screen) -> About This Mac -> More Info... -> System Report and looked under Hardware -> Disc Burning and saw the that although the device was connected and visible in Finder, it WASN'T listed here. The reason seems to be because I WAS CONNECTING IT VIA A (POWERED) USB HUB. I connected the device directly to the Mac (using BOTH the supplied USB plugs, both plugged directly into the mac via the two USB ports) and it now appeared in that System Report AND I could now choose Connect in the Parallels Configure -> CD/DVD menu and it actually would! (May have had to reboot Parallels first, can't remember.) Now my software could see it properly (ArcSoft TotalMedia Extreme - which is unusably terrible for playing DVDs/Blu-rays BTW). Before it could only see the drive as a "VIRTUAL DVD-ROM" and refused to recognise any media (blank or otherwise), but it would now fully recognise it. FYI This also resolved a problem I was having in the Mac OS side that I couldn't previously burn using that DVD/blu-ray drive.

Curiously, since attaching it directly I CAN (at the moment anyway) now connect via a powered USB hub. I think perhaps it just needed that initial direct contact, not sure.

PS Haven't tried booting Parallels from a disc in the Pioneer drive since, but suspect it should work as it is successfully Connected now.