Now it's working
While struggling with the issue of changing the drive-icons [Option 2] I decided to try Option 1 once again. Since it did not work the way it did on Windows-7, it occurred to me to make a slight configuration change as follows:
While in Win7 I set the .inf files [in all the drives] - to point to the Icons folder in drive F [with the correct path name] and it worked fine, In Windows-8 I decided to place an icon folder on each drive aside the .inf file and it seemed to do the trick. So - if option one does not seem to work for anyone - try the other method of the icon folder placement before giving up [quite close to where I was]...
Hell knows why it worked one way and not the other - and perhaps hell knows why option 2 did not work for me at all.
Thanks Brink, for leading the way...
Cheers