Hard drive doesn't recognise cd rom drives

[technogrrl0101]

Hi, I hope you all can help me with this problem:

I had reformatted my c drive and tried to reinstall Windows 98, and the hard drive will not recognize either of my cd rom drives. When I tried to install Windows 98 from the floppy disk (rescue disk) with cd-rom support, I got an error message with one drive and with the other it just doesn't recognize it at all. There had actually been a problem since I installed my cd-rw drive, after that I was unable to run programs from the original cd rom drive but didn't bother to try to fix it since the cd-rw drive worked so I just used that one. But now I can't install Windows 98 since it's on a cd rom! I am thinking that the problem has to do with the cd rom drivers and that there may be a way to install the drivers for one or both cd rom drives from a floppy disk (the hard drive does recognize the floppy drive). Would this be possible, and how could it be done? Would this fix the problem?

Thanks, Michelle

[Budfred]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

Your hard drive doesn't recognize anything, it is your BIOS or the OS on the hard drive that would recognize the drives. I am guessing that the reason your CDRom wasn't working before is that you may not have jumpered it correctly. If both drives are on the same cable, one needs to be jumpered as Master and one as Slave. The end of the cable goes to Master and the middle is Slave. If this is correct, check to make sure the cables are installed properly. If the CDRom cable is on backwards, it could also account for it not working.

Your boot floppy drivers should be all you need for the CD drive. If it still doesn't work after any adjustments you make, you can download a bootdisk with CD support from Bootdisk (http://bootdisk.com) and try that.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

And welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

If your rescue disk is a boot disk, it shoud be fine. It sounds to me like you may have installed the CD-RW as a master on your secondary IDE cable with the CD-ROM as a master as well (2 masters on 1 cable won't work).

Try removing the CD burner and see if you can install with the CD-ROM.

If this works you'll need to jumper the CD drives properly to get them both to work.

If bad comes to worse, there's a way to make Windows 98 CD into a series of floppies.

EDIT: Budfred, One of these days I'm gonna have to learn to type with more than 2 fingers... :o :D

[Sylvander]

1. All your drives should be set to “Auto” in the BIOS Setup.
Then during startup [after the memory check and before the floppy boot] you will see your HDD’s and CD-drives being detected and the results displayed on screen.
This “Dynamic Auto Detection and Configuration” will correctly set the parameters for all the drives at each and every startup and being correctly set the drives will be capable of working as they should.
But they then need the BIOS to directly control them under instructions from a driver which is given commands by an O/S [DOS]. The Windows “Startup Disk” includes generic drivers for the CD-Drives and an O/S.

2. After the drive detection is displayed, if you have the “Startup Disk” in the drive.
During the boot from this [with CD-ROM support] you should see displayed the CD drives found [they wouldn’t be found if the BIOS didn’t detect and configure them as in 1 above] and the drive letters allocated [for the RAMdrive].
Perhaps you could explain more precisely why you think the CD drives are not recognised.
The generic drivers ALMOST always are suitable and therefore work, [but not always].
That’s most unlikely to be the cause of your problem but just incase:
See this http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;188391
And this http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;190303

3. Even when all is well and properly working things can go wrong if you have two CD drives.
I used to put the CD into one drive and specify the drive letter of the other and get an error report as a consequence.
The CD drive jumpered as Master is given the first letter and the Slave the next, so know which is the Master to figure out which letter it has been given and use the correct one in the command issued.

[technogrrl0101]

Turns out I did have them jumpered incorrectly! Well, I had set the 1st cd-rom drive to "slave" and the new one to "master" because I wanted that to be the main cd-rom drive. But I just noticed that the big wide ribbon cable (sorry I don't know the correct term for that cable) had "cd 1" written on one connection and "cd 2" on the other. I had the 1st cd-rom drive connected to the "cd 1" connection, even though it was set to "slave". Could that be why it didn't work? Anyway I took out the second cd-rom drive and then the first one was recognized by the BIOS.

[Sylvander]

Was CD1 at the end of the cable and CD2 in the middle?

You should have both CD-drives connected to the [ribbon cable going to the] secondary IDE controller.
The CD-RW jumpered as master connected to the end of the cable [CD1?] and the CD-ROM jumpered as slave connected to the middle [CD2?].
They should be set to auto-detect [in BIOS Setup>Standard CMOS Setup] and you should see the results of the detection [and the correct configuration] [by the BIOS] displayed on screen during startup.