cd rom problems

guy has a computer with a cdrom that wasn't working. It made noises from the inside, so I replaced it for him with a new cdrom. He is running Win98. It still did not work. I reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled Win98. The cdrom was working, as I used it to install Win98 and Office.

The guy takes his computer home. A couple of days later he comes back in and tells me that the cdrom is not working. It won't load any cd's. He brings the computer in and I see that the cd is recognized, if I right-click and hit eject, it works, but if I put a cd in, I cannot run the cd.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Rafi

What motherboard and chipset? Did you load the IDE controller drivers? If its a via chipset get the latest 4 in 1's from www.viaarena.com.

Check for the machine using compatibility mode and search the registry for the key NOIDE.. a virus scan wouldn't go astray either!

I'd lean towards virus too, unless he smokes veeeery heavily, try the rom in another machine, see what happens then..

G.

but it is new new rom on formatted computer - how could it have a virus or be affected by his smoke?

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Originally posted by NooNoo
What motherboard and chipset? Did you load the IDE controller drivers? If its a via chipset get the latest 4 in 1's from www.viaarena.com.

Check for the machine using compatibility mode and search the registry for the key NOIDE.. a virus scan wouldn't go astray either!

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will try it..

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Originally posted by goldmeier
but it is new new rom on formatted computer - how could it have a virus or be affected by his smoke?

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The virus is easily answered - he had it for two days.... one download or one infected floppy will reinfect the system. As for smoke, well mebbe not smoke, but children are pretty good at putting things in where they shouldn't, he may have removed the offending object but it has knocked out the alignment so the laser doesn't read properly.

You could check to see if you can access the cd-rom in DOS. If you can it points to a Windows issue. I would also virus scan, just to be safe.

Quote:

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Originally posted by NooNoo


The virus is easily answered - he had it for two days.... one download or one infected floppy will reinfect the system. As for smoke, well mebbe not smoke, but children are pretty good at putting things in where they shouldn't, he may have removed the offending object but it has knocked out the alignment so the laser doesn't read properly.

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according to what he claims, it doesnt sound like a virus. He has no internet connection on this computer, and says right when he got home he tried to use it but it did not read the cd.

If it is a virus, are there viruses that stay resident in the memory (cache or something)? I formatted but did not fdisk..

If you reboot and boot from a non-infected source, like a floppy disk or CD-ROM you shouldn't have to worry about virii in memory unless you run or access an infected file on a contaminated disk.

Unless, of course, he has a boot sector virus..these are not removed by formatting, only by fdisk /mbr..and they do spread significantly from infected floppies. You know it works in dos, or you wouldn't have been able to install windows. Have you tried hooking it up maybe as slave on the primary IDE?..assuming that it isn't there already. Since it is seen in windows, try checking or unchecking DMA, also make sure the properties in device manager are set for auto insert notification enabled.

Some other possible culprits... environmental... Where is he using it.... Power supply.. Maybe the power supply is weak or starting to go dead and just isn't kicking enough juice. I've been seeing more and more problems come from weak or dying power supplies all the time.

Go to BIOS setting and set it to start from CD-ROM, and try to boot from bootable CD. If it works, then it's problem with Windows...

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Originally posted by Ruslan
Go to BIOS setting and set it to start from CD-ROM, and try to boot from bootable CD. If it works, then it's problem with Windows...

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It does not boot from the cd. I tried with a few different cootable cd's. I get "press any key to boot from Atapi CD" it waits a couple of secs, says failed and boots Win98..

Do you think FDisk will help the situatioin? Maybe a bit of Zap and Wipe as well..

If the cdrom will not boot from bios... the cd is probably dead. Put the cdrom in a known good system as a final check.

Make a win98 boot floopy, boot with it, insert a win98 working cd on cd drive, try to copy win98 dir to c: (ex. c:\temp, then delete), if everything ok it's a windows problem, if no try cd rom drive on an other pc (in your pc, you know its ok), then if ok motherboard problem (update bios or/and put cdrom drive on the other bus possibly alone OR sorry! replace mainboard). But be careful see what the customer thinks about the cdrom use; It happend to me that someone left the tray open and uses it to place things, in this case this is not warrnty, ou yes open that cdrom drive to see if somebody has added somthing inside.