There's the XStream software pack, then there's an additional aladdin driver pack, and I believe the order is supposed to be that way. If you go into the device manager you should be able to update drivers for unknown devices, and windows may auto-find the installed driver. It has been finicky for me before, but I'm not entirely sure why. With my last install, one of the drivers in the pack didn't seem to install on its own, but process of elimination forcing it to install on the remaining unknown device worked fine. I also think the printer driver needs to be installed after everything, if you have it, since the printer connection is through the PCI card, so you need the card's drivers to be in place for it to even be found.
There's also the chance something is actually wrong with it. Communication errors generally show up in the bottom notification box, but you can get more detail as to what is going on through the service menu or the xstream browser (I think that's what it's called) that will give you some additional configuration and diagnostic information that you can normally find through remote control commands.
BTW, "burning" a CD ISO to a USB key will never be bootable (unless they've expanded options now), a bootable USB needs a boot sector setup closer to a floppy disk than a CD drive, so there's a format difference that prevents just a CD ISO from doing the job. I think the official method for XP on a USB key was something like taking the full install, the boot sector from a bootable floppy, then using a tool to build the USB key from that.... hard to remember the details as it's been like 15 years :p