[RESOLVED] CD-Rom/CD-RW problems!

[Diabolous]

Alright, this is a very strange problem to me:

1) I installed WinME about 2 weeks ago, and it is the final release. I used a normal Win98 start-up disk to start the install, and everything went fine. It created the normal RAMdrive, detected both my CD-Rom and CD-RW without any problems, and the start-up disk assigned them both drive letters.

2) The install of WinME went flawless -- No problems at all. I installed quite a few programs from CDs, and none of them had problems at all.

I haven't touched the CD-Rom or CD-RW in about a week and a half or so. When I went to install a game tonight, it wouldn't auto-run the CD, so I went into My Computer to start it manually. Well, when I double-clicked on the drive, it asked me to insert a CD into the drive, eventhough the CD WAS in there. This happened on both my CD-Rom and CD-RW. I figured, okay, maybe it is the disc -- Nope. I tried several CDs, and all of them gave me the same result.

When I go to a command prompt and try to access the drive, it says "Drive not ready, abort, retry, fail" ...

I used the WinME start-up disk that I created a while back. It loads the CD-Rom drivers, assigns both drives a letter, and tells me that they are there. Yet, if I try to access a CD on either drive, it gives me the old CDR101 error.

When I boot-up, the POST will detect both of my CD-Roms.

Both of them are in the device manager, and Windows says both of them are working properly.

I have tried unchecking the "disconnect" option in both of them.

I have unchecked DMA in both of them, have also tried it with DMA checked for both of them.

Have tried disabling/enabling DMA in my bios for both of them.

Checked the seating of the cables, both are fine.

When windows boots, the activity light for BOTH of them come on -- So, the drives themselves are working, there is power.

It just won't read ANY Cd-Roms. It tells me to insert a CD when I try?! I'm really lost on this one.

I have tried manually loading DOS drivers by adding the necessary lines into autoexec.bat and config.sys -- same result.

And, the kicker, they both worked GREAT about a week and a half ago, and nothing has changed on the system. I haven't installed any programs, haven't done anything to the registry -- nothing.

Any ideas? I am completely lost on this one. I was thinking it could be the cables, but if that were true -- it wouldn't detect on POST, correct?

COuld both of my drives just died? I don't get it. ANy help would be GREATLY appreciated. This is really frustrating!!

[shawnMt]

Just so we all know the drives work, use the original 98 boot disk that you first used to install ME. The one that saw/worked with both drives and boot off it. Then try to access each drive. If you boot off this floppy, no software (OSs included) can make changes to whether or not the drives work.

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Paint your old laptop!

[This message has been edited by shawnMt (edited September 23, 2000).]

[hthom131]

Have you tried changing over the jumper setting for the CD-rom and Cd-writer. I recently had a similar problem with both CD-roms in which Windows 98 SE locked up on booting in windows. Although I installed all the latest drivers for my motherboard, graphics card, and Cd-writer software Windows locked up everytime. The only solution was to set the jumper at the back of the Cd-writer to Master and the CD-rom to slave. I then reinstalled my motherboard drivers and reinstalled my Cd-writer software. The problem then went away. I also realised the Cd-rom used UDMA/33 which the CD-rom used Mode 4. I disable the UDMA for both in the BIOS so both CD-roms on the Secondary IDE port used Mode 4 (You can check this when the system boots up - press pause if the screen disappears to quickly). This could be a possiblity if not, I tried