No cd-rom icon under My computer?

[SuperJudge_XIII]

I have a friend who was recently given an old 486 computer so she can learn about them before purchasing a new one. She wanted me to upgrade this 486 to win98 so I did and when I went into the bios to enable the cd-rom feature for system boot only, I noticed that it only had the floppy and HD as options. So what I did was install her HD onto my computer and loaded win98 from there. Everything worked great until I noticed that she had no CD-rom icon under MY COMPUTER. What happened? The computer in question was not a name brand but was built by someone in the local area years ago so I have no idea what the specs are but I do know it had a Pheonix bios. Any recommendations on how to solve this problem would help. Or should I reinstall win95?
Thanks.

[DJSEARCHING]

Yeah I do that for some newbies too.However some of the older bios's didn't support the cd rom for booting.I would start over again,and not worry about the bios,as long as windows picks it up.Also don't forget to switch the boot sequence back to a/c,in case she needs to use the boot disc to get back on.

[Wayward Clam]

I partly agree with DJS, not all old BIOSes support CD drives. Unfortunately I disagree that Windows will necessarily recognize it if the BIOS won't. Has the machine ever had a CD-ROM in it before?

If not, you may need to install a drive controller, update the BIOS, or find one of those old Multimedia Kits that support the CDROM off the sound card. (If you go the Multimedia Kit route, most of these will be properly detected and installed by Windows without causing you much grief.)

Good luck!

[DJSEARCHING]

Sorry I understood the queation to be windows loaded ok,but he couldn't find the cd rom in the bios.And I think the basis was,and I do it too,fix the older machine for as little buck$ as possible while they learn,and buy a better one later.My mistake. <IMG SRC="smilies/rolleyes.gif" border="0">

[SuperJudge_XIII]

The whole thing revolves around Windows not recognizing the cdrom therefore it doesn't show up under MY COMPUTER. Sorry, I should have made it more clear. The bios did throw me abit, but found a way around that like I said with putting the HD from the 486 into my system and from there reformating the disk then loading win98. The problem is that she can't use the cdrom. Sorry about the misunderstanding. She said it worked under win95 (I never checked it out before putting win98 on). It all started when her son deleted some important system files and she didn't have a win95 disk to correct it. Long story. So this is where I come in and now her 486 doesn't recognize the cdrom. I'm almost to the point that I believe the thing is just too old to have win98 installed, I mean the motherboard is a jumbled mess of crap! You would just have to see it to believe it almost nothing actually is connected to the board except for the sound card, modem, vid card, and a really huge card with all the IDE cables and other stuff connected to it. ARRRGGGHHHH!
I appreciate all the help and I am truly sorry for the long message.

Thanks again!

[Wayward Clam]

Is everything okay in Device Manager, particularly in the IDE drive controller area? Could be there were drivers there that worked fine under W95, but not under W98. I don't think it's LIKELY, mind you, but if the CDROM really was working under 95 and not anymore, then you're facing something a little more complex than a loose IDE cable (I'm assuming, of course, you've already checked this <IMG SRC="smilies/biggrin.gif" border="0"> ).

If the CDROM shows up in Device Manager, but not in My Computer, thas a whole different story, too...

[DJSEARCHING]

Two choices.Get the model,and get the driver.Or put another cd rom in.One prob you might run across,is that I'm not sure how you loaded win98 in your machine(slave?).In other words you might be showing devices in that hard drive that was in your machine,but not in hers.

[SuperJudge_XIII]

As for the question of "did I install it in my computer as a slave..." no, I just unplugged my HD and plugged hers in its place and the Device Mgr, I never even thought to look. Its always the small things you forget sometimes, THANKS, I'll look into that possibility.

[Sly]

If it was an earley ver. of win95 (a) the the drivers for the cd-rom was loaded for the autoexec.bat.. Try a win98 bootdisk it might pickup the cd-rom, if not you need to find the driver for the cd-rom

• Thing to look for;
• Is the cd-rom used with a sound card?
• Will the system support cd-rom
• Is the cd-rom set to master or slave
• CD-ROM maker, FCCid #, and model number

Just a few things to look for, it might help, it might not!!!!

Good Luck <IMG SRC="smilies/smile.gif" border="0">

[condor]

you say you installed her Windows from your computer...

do this..

format her computer...
take the HDD and connect it in your computer..
put the Win98 Setup cabs on a directory on her HDD (like c:\w98inst)
boot from a win98 system floppy
run setup from the HDD.

also a good idea would be to give us the specs for the computer..

you can get hardware info for dos to do 99% of this job for you - all you have to do is post the specs <IMG SRC="smilies/smile.gif" border="0">
http://www.hwinfo.com

Get the DOS version, boot from a floppy and check..


Hope it helps