I'm trying to put together a system from different parts that I've recently acquired. Everything is going smoothly, I've installed the hd and floppy without a hitch. Problem is that win95 won't see the cd rom. I install it and begin to boot, it alerts me that it sees the cd rom on whatever disc I have it.........but then when it finishes booting, the cd rom is nowhere to be found. I've done the obvious stuff with jumper settings and connections, but nothing seems to work. Although I'm no expert at this stuff, I have common sense.............but I'm at the point where I'm getting frustrated. Any help would be appreciated.

How did you install Win 95 without a CD-ROM?

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Sandman

Good question.............the I took the hard drive from another pc and literally plugged it into the machine in question...........upon booting up, win95 recognized all of the new devices except for the cd rom. Originally posted by gwallen4:
How did you install Win 95 without a CD-ROM?

It's been awhile since I used Win95, but I think if you have a Win95 or Win98 start up disk, you can boot your computer to dos with CDrom support, then see if the CDrom works. If you can't, then something's wrong. If Bios can see it, but you can't read the data then it's probably a bad CDrom.

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Sandman

sounds like a good idea.......I'll give it a shot and let you know. Thanks for the advice. Originally posted by gwallen4:
It's been awhile since I used Win95, but I think if you have a Win95 or Win98 start up disk, you can boot your computer to dos with CDrom support, then see if the CDrom works. If you can't, then something's wrong. If Bios can see it, but you can't read the data then it's probably a bad CDrom.

Also, make sure that the red stripe along the one edge of its ribbon cable is next to pin 1 on the motherboard terminal, and facing the power cable on the back of the drive.

If that's ok, boot into Safe mode, remove all CD-ROM drives from Device Manager, restart, and let Windows recognize just your CD-ROM drive.

If the above does not work, then try a reformat and reinstall.

Ski:

He's getting a notice during boot that the CDROM is recognized. Would that happen if the cable was reversed?

Also I'm not sure how he's going to reinstall without a functioning CDROM.

Looking at the device manager might be beneficial to see what the status of the CDROM is - whether it's functioning or not. I didn't think about removing the CDROM from the device manager then rebooting to see if windows will recognize the CDROM - this is a good idea too.

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Sandman

gwallen4,

You may be right about the CD-ROM drive not being recognized during bootup if the IDE cable is reversed.

But he will be able to reinstall Windows using the CD-ROM drive since this in done with a real mode driver in DOS, and not with a protected mode driver in Windows. However, he will have to use a boot floppy with a real mode driver for his CD-ROM drive so that it will work in DOS. Normally, a Win 98 boot floppy has generic DOS drivers for most CD-ROM drives.

splucas22 : Also, we have done what you said you did..plug in a hard drive and go with it, but be advised that you may have conflicts with the "old" mobo drivers on the hard drive and the drivers needed for the other mobo...so you might check for mobo drivers, or better yet, if you have a 95 CD or 98, it would be "better" to do a clean install.

Found a couple of things for installing 95 clean Bud's installation (http://www.geocities.com/~budallen/95installclean.html) and here at winplanet (http://www.winplanet.com/winplanet/tutorials/781/1/). I also think you need the 98 bootdisk though..had more CDRom drivers. Can get one here at bootdisk (http://www.bootdisk.com/) if you don't already have one.

gwallen4 : Just as a note of interest, we did a clean install of 98 awhile back..installed 98 just fine, and then lost the CDRom, so it can be done. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif We concur though...think bad CDRom.

Did I hear my name??? http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/tongue.gif

The W95 boot disk does NOT have CD-Rom drivers on it. That is the whole problem. I have W95 on floppies for that reason but I also have it on CD-ROM and whenever installing from CD-ROM, I use a 98 boot disk. It's that simple.

There is nothing wrong with the CD-ROM, there's just nothing to run it with. Maybe DOS would work too but I've never tried it.

Make one from the link Kay suggests if you don't have a 98 disk to make one from.



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I've got it made in the shade as long as the tree don't fall...

You can also drag ya Win95 CD over on ya desktop and use Nero to create a bootable cd and add ya Win95 files and make a bootable 95 cd. I did it to save time from finding the floppies instead of using them.

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**How TO End Task A FREZZE**
ALT-CTRL-POWER BUTTON

If you're talking to me, good suggestion but the author has NO CD-ROM support on the pc he's trying to load windows into.

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I've got it made in the shade as long as the tree don't fall...

Windows - as it has evolved over the years - 3.1 was virtually a DOS machine with windows just an interface up to XP which is not reliant on DOS at all and in between WIN9x & WINME where more and more of the dos functions are taken over by windows especially in the config.sys and autoexec.bat areas to the point that WINme only has a set statement for windows and config.sys is empty. That being said WIN95 still relied more heavily on DOS config.sys & autoexec.bat than later WIN9x versions. And it follows, that unless you are an experienced tech who knows what files to transfer around etc - stick to the proper boot floppy for your version of windows.

Normally with WIN95 - first off - many older machines system BIOS don't recognize cdrom so CDROM driver needs to be in config.sys

Using a WIN95 boot floppy

Fdisk

Format

Sys c:

reboot to c:

That would be when system should be picking up CDROM****

point to CDROm and proceed to set up WIN95

***IN config.sys there is an exec program called mscdex.exe which sets up and assigns a drive letter for CDROM

If still can't see cdrom try typing mscdex.exe in the root and see if you pick up CDROM - but if you use a straight up WIN95 Boot disk this shouldn't be a problem as this was part of the DOS support back in WIN95 days.

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/cool.gif

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Good Judgement comes from Experience - Experience comes from Bad Judgement - but bad judgement is more fun!!