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PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

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I took my Cd-ROM drive out of my P300 but when I plugged it back in (no boot-up inbetween) there is no CD drive in Device Manager. I’ve tried all the usual – re-installing after deleting all devices & drivers etc., but W98 will NOT detect a CD drive. Any ideas?

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PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

First start with the basics, check all cable connections to insure that all are tight and pin 1 is to pin 1with some ide cables the notch to prevent crossing pins is missing, next switch the power plugs on the hard drive and cd drive to see if the plug may have gone bad or been pulled out of socket. Clear cmos and have system autodetect hard drives. this should clear any problem with the drive in bios. If the drive is seen in BIOS but not system try making boot disk from add/ remove programs and see if drive is accessible there. you may need to install dos mode drivers from the autoexec.bat and config.sys files of the boot disk to get it running again. if you do install from the boot disk, then you may have to adjust the autoexec.bat file to finish BEFORE windows starts as the mscdex file may not run until after the windows gui loads. if this is the case have windows restart in msdos mode and then mscdex should load. reload windows and everything should be ok. you may have to do several trial and errors to get the system to boot properly, but of greatest importance is checking the status of the system and the drive.

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

Good strategy, but I still end up without a CD-ROM drive being detected by W98!

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

Well the problem is check the cable. There cant be anyother problem coz Win98 auto configs your CDROM drive if it is recognized. So open the CPU and check for the cables i.e. ide, harddisk, cdrom cabling.. hope it should work

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

Done – no difference!

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

There is always the chance that when you unplugged your CD-ROM while Windows was still running that you fried it. Doubtful, but a possibility. Shut off your computer. Remove the CD-ROM drive. Reboot to safe mode – remove CD-ROM drive. Reboot tonormal. Shut down. Reinstall CD-ROM drive. Boot into normal mode. If Windows doesn’t find the drive then try the add hardware wizard or the installation disk that came with the drive.

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

Done this – didn’t work, but thanks.

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

I wholeheartedly concur with my learned colleuges, however it may also be prudent of you to check your jumper settings on the rear of your CD ROM as you may have inadvertently replaced the CD rom to another channel on your IDE cable (IE primary slave etc). Check in the system BIOS and do an auto scan of IDE devices to see if your CD ROM shows up ok. Most modern(ish) machines detect the CD without any problems.

Let me know the outcome.

Regds

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

Jumpers Ok. OK in BIOS.

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

If all of the above failed, try a new CD-ROM drive. I think it is worth the head ach. good luck.

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

It runs OK in DOS so its a W98 problem I think.

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

Thanks for all your suggestions – sadly none of them worked, but I now know more.
My single HDD is Primary Master, My CD-ROM drive is Primary Slave.
I note that my HDD is operating in MS-DOS compatability mode.
Drive (CD) IS seen in BIOS (Atapi CD-ROM)(CD-ROM UDMA33), although auto-detect will not list it, only the HDD. Primary slave is set to AUTO under TYPE & MODE.
Drive works perfectly if booted with W98 Startup floppy.
Using this boot mode, I tried to re-install it, but I don’t have enough experience on PC’s to get the mscdex files up properly, I always get a error “cannot find VFAT drivers”.
I did double check the cables, but as it works 100% from floppy I’ve dismissed that.
It seems to me that Windows is loading corrupted datacos the CD works in dos mode.

Device manager shows nothing about CD-ROMs at all now, but under HARD DISK CONTROLLERS both the primary master and slave have yellow “!” next to them. I re-installed their drivers OK but still got “!”, so I was lead to the PCI IDE CONTROLLER which I deleted and re-installed. Still got “!”, so I put an MS generic bus driver in but still got “!”. (yes I did re-boot after each change!)

So still stuck – I’ve got the latest VC running, but wonder if it is a virusthat makes Windows mis-load the bus driver every time.

Maybe I should do a format and clean install? Don’t really want to cos’ I’ve only got floppies to back up with!

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

You say in your notes the primary & secondary ide controllers have a ! beside them.This could be because some other device is using the resources for them.Try removing other devices along with your ide controllers and then reboot.The devices may automatically be installed.Also try your cd-rom as a slave on the same cable as the hard drive. Good luck.

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

Tried all that – still no luck!
Thanks anyway!

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

In reply to PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

I’ve now found that the system is running COMPATABILITY MODE PAGING. I’ve re-installed a back-up copy of config.sys & autoexec.bat but it doesn’t help.

PC no longer recognises CD-ROM drive.

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