INVALID DRIVE SPECIFICATION

**ephmynus** · May 30th, 2001, 11:15 AM

Don't know if this will help but with a lot of boot disks it will also load a drive letter for the virtual ram disk directly after the primary hard drive. Hence, hard drive will be c: virtaul ram disk will be d: and cd rom will then be assigned e:

**Ryno** · May 30th, 2001, 05:41 PM

Yea, I thought of that a while back...tried every letter in the alphabet with no luck of course.
Mr. Myagi....the ide cable didn't work either, nor did another cdrom with the new cable...hmmmmmmm thinking maybe a real problem with the board. Going to try and see what I can do to test a mainboard for defects because this just isn't happening. It is a FIC VA 503+1M...found drivers @ fic.com.tw\advantage....basically a via chipset. So anywhooo.....here we go again!

**Knucklehead** · May 30th, 2001, 06:35 PM

This one shouldn't be so complicated! Does the bios detect the CDROM? If not, are the jumpers correct (some get set as Slave or Cable Select)? Is the Secondary IDE channel enabled in the BIOS? The fact that the IDE cable was reversed indicates that this system was not up and running in its present configuration so the problem didn't just "occur". If the BIOS detects the CDROM, boot from the 98 boot disk and it will try to load the drivers and tell you whether or not it has detected any CDROMs and if so, what drive letter is has assigned to it. You don't need anything in Autooexec.bat or Config.sys. This should work unless you have some mainboard or IDE configuration you haven't told us about such a proprietory CDROM connector.

**Mr_Miyagi** · May 31st, 2001, 07:31 AM

cable orientation - look for pin one, mobo and device!

if it dont work in the other pc its prbably time for anew drive!

lol
<IMG SRC="smilies/rolleyes.gif" border="0">

**Ryno** · June 2nd, 2001, 05:43 PM

How bout this then...(even though I now think the problem is the moboard, I still want to rule out the hdd and memory...it is not a power issue and the bios IS detecting the cdrom, and yes it is enabled)...how safe would it be to put this hdd, fdisked and formatted, into an operable machine with win 98 on it, and try and put the os in it as a slave, then installing it back into the original pc.....and...how safe is it to take out my sdram and put it into the other machine as a test as well?? Could that possibly ruin my ram? Or my win 98 system?
Hmmmmmmmm..........

**http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi** · June 2nd, 2001, 07:45 PM

<IMG SRC="smilies/frown.gif" border="0"> Sorry: I not write English...

Format c:/s
copy MSCDEX in C:
CDROM ¿¿¿¿ ATAPI, AOpen, BTC, etc... ???
Find CD Drivers for DOS and install in C:

<IMG SRC="smilies/eek.gif" border="0">

**http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi** · June 2nd, 2001, 07:47 PM

<IMG SRC="smilies/frown.gif" border="0"> Sorry: I not write English...

Format c:/s
copy MSCDEX in C:
CDROM ¿¿¿¿ ATAPI, AOpen, BTC, etc... ???
Find CD Drivers for DOS and install in C:

<IMG SRC="smilies/eek.gif" border="0">

**DocPC** · June 2nd, 2001, 08:45 PM

I wonder if the CD-ROM is propietary, that is, an older one connected to a sound or controller card. That may explain why it won't load.

**Ryno** · June 3rd, 2001, 07:19 AM

It appears to be the same as any that I have...with just ide cable and pwr. I tried my own cdrom and it didn't work either.
The original is an Afreey DT-CD50A.

**Mr_Miyagi** · June 3rd, 2001, 11:28 AM

Originally posted by Ryno:
<STRONG>How bout this then...(even though I now think the problem is the moboard, I still want to rule out the hdd and memory...it is not a power issue and the bios IS detecting the cdrom, and yes it is enabled)...how safe would it be to put this hdd, fdisked and formatted, into an operable machine with win 98 on it, and try and put the os in it as a slave, then installing it back into the original pc.....and...how safe is it to take out my sdram and put it into the other machine as a test as well?? Could that possibly ruin my ram? Or my win 98 system?
Hmmmmmmmm..........</STRONG>

1st you won't hurt the ram providing you follow ESD safety guidelines while handling!

2nd, if you're going to all that trouble, whip the hdd from the current pc, take the other hdd out, make the swap primary/master; try to install the o/s. then reverse procedures and see if it will boot.

theres a few problems (to do mainly with the hardware and drivers that o/s will load on the donor pc) but if the original will then boot, those probs are minor ones.

good luck! <IMG SRC="smilies/cool.gif" border="0"> keep us informed. <IMG SRC="smilies/tongue.gif" border="0">

**Ryno** · June 3rd, 2001, 01:33 PM

Just to be sure I've got this right...take the hdrive out of the (working) pc, and put in the hdd that I am having trouble with (back into the working pc), try to install the os, then put the hdd back into the troubled pc to see if it worked? And this will not endanger the working pc? Provided I do not change any major settings? Thanks!

**Mr_Miyagi** · June 7th, 2001, 07:14 AM

Originally posted by Ryno:
<STRONG>Just to be sure I've got this right...take the hdrive out of the (working) pc, and put in the hdd that I am having trouble with (back into the working pc), try to install the os, then put the hdd back into the troubled pc to see if it worked? And this will not endanger the working pc? Provided I do not change any major settings? Thanks!</STRONG>

thats right.

the only problem you'll have is when you install the o/s (working pc) and put into (problem pc); the hardware is different (i assume) so windows may object..but these are minor problems. just see if the thing will boot to windows first!!!!!

good luck. <IMG SRC="smilies/cool.gif" border="0"> <IMG SRC="smilies/wink.gif" border="0">

**ScooterWad** · June 7th, 2001, 11:11 PM

Myagi's right. I have a spare 2.1 gb HDD that I keep around. It only has Win98SE loaded on it, and it's very easy to pop into a system and trouble shoot these type problems. If it boots, I know the rest of my system is ok. If you have any small drives lying around, can be a huge time saver. I know this probably doesn't help you much right now, but keep on trying. Sounds like Myagi's got you goin in the right direction.
Also, there's an post here that mentions the virtual drive setup when booting from a Windows rescue disk. This is true, no matter what last drive letter you have designated. If your cdrom is D:, the boot disk sets up a virtual D:, and loads the diagnostics there, then changes your cdrom to E:. Once you've installed Windows by running E:/setup and reboot, it returns the cdrom to the original D: designation. But it doesn't sound like this is your problem either.
Have you tried running both the HDD and cdrom from the primary IDE drive and designating the HDD as master and cdrom as slave. This would tell you if your IDE controller was having a problem with the secondary.

**futuretech** · June 7th, 2001, 11:52 PM

See if you can get a hold of a cd-rom drivers disk and install it onto C: drive.
A lot of the older cd-roms would not work off of some of the generic drivers found on other boot disks.

**Ryno** · June 10th, 2001, 05:33 AM

Thanks guys....I am still (on occasion) tinkering with this...since last post, have just installed win98 on the hdrive using the (working) computer, and it installed like a breeze. Put it into the other system, and Mr. Myagi nailed it to the "T"...however, it did make several changes while booting up, but eventually bypassing windows startup and going into the ever familiar safe mode. A few missing files here and there....vxd's and such but didn't write them down. Could still not access cd-rom, but I do have the exact driver on floppy from afreey's site. It is a 50x (50 speed)?...so how old can it be? As of this second, (looking over shoulder) I am rebooting the computer, and will try my luck again with the cdrom.

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