CD-ROm drive D: does not display

[garyfoster]

I have just completed running my "restore 98" CD to reformat and restore windows 98. This was done successfully. However when I opened up exploring I could not find the D: drive on the tree. I am not able to use this CD-ROM to install my programs, etc
What should I do?

 

[Nick Scott]

Is the drive showing up in Device manager as a CD-ROM drive? Does it show up when the PC is booting up in the Devices found listing that the BIOS displays on the screen before Windows starts?

If not I would check the physical connection of the drive's IDE cable and power cable, as they sometimes come loose, and without a good connection the drive won't show up to the PC at all.

Also is the drive properly jumpered as master or slave for its position on the IDE cable and channel?

 

[garyfoster]

Nick, thanks for the reply.
Yes the CD-ROM shows up when booting....when I open exploring and look at the tree it will start with :
Desktop->then My Computer-> then (C)-->then cdromdrv--.then My Documents etc.
Now when I click on "cdromdrv" it only show a heading of "cdromdrv"...nothing else??

Your second suggestion-"is the drive properly jumpered..." I am not sure how to check this? Can you help?
Thanks
Gary

 

[Nick Scott]

You will need to open the case and may have to remove the drive from it to see how the jumper settings are set.

At the rear of the drive usually to the left of the IDE cable connector, there are a number of pins which can be set open or closed with a plastic jumper. Normally the drive has how to set these for master, slave and cable select printed on top of it.

What to set it as depends upon what else is connected to that IDE ribbon cable. If nothing it should be set to master, and you should use the end connector of the ribbon cable to connect to the CD drive.

If there is something else on the same cable (another drive, Zip or CD-RW etc) then set it to slave and use the middle connector of the ribbon cable to connect the drive.

Have you looked at the drive in device manager (go to control panel, then system, then the device manager tab) to see if the drive is showing up there? Highlight it and select properties to see if Windows detects that there is something wrong with the drive.

 

[deanas]

Hello all
I wouldn't worry about the cabling and drive
mastering yet. I assume the cd-rom worked
when you reinstalled win, so do check out the
system applet in control panel.
If something is funky you will see an exclamation
point in the cd-rom area. Check out the properties
and see if there is a conflict with something else.
If you have the driver on a floppy you should
be able to use the new driver button to install
the driver.
Let us know what you find out

 

[Nick Scott]

As the CD-ROM drive doesn't use an IRQ (the IDE controller which runs it uses that) there won't ever be a conflict of the actual CD ROM with another device.

There is no need to load a driver for a CD ROM drive. Windows always automatically loads the MSCDEX driver for CD-ROM drives when it detects that there is one there. In device manager you will see that it says on the driver page for the CD drive "No driver files are required or have been loaded for this device". That is totally normal.

It might be worth checking that the mscdex file isn't damaged. Go to start - run and type sfc (which stands for system file checker) and this will check that mscdex (and the rest of your system files) are intact.

 

[garyfoster]

Nick, thanks for all this info,
I opened the panels and checked the jumper..it definitely is set to master...no other devices connected.
I looked in device manager...no CD-ROM shown at all.
Would you have any idea what I could do now?
Gary

 

[garyfoster]

Hi again Nick,
I ran sfc and it started showing me that file: user.exe may be corrupted. I chose Restore file and clicked OK...it then prompts me to show location of file..well this would be on the installation disk (not the Restor98 disk) wouldn't it? BUT it does not find the D: drive to be able to proceed!
What should I do?
Gary