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For the past couple days my two cd drives have been missing in windows. On boot-up they are identified on an IRQ channel and as a master/slave relationship. They function in that the trays open and close and led lights seem to indicate processing. When I arrive in windows however, they are nowhere to be found. I cannot find them under hard disk controllers in the system manager. I have tried various options in my BIOS and checked the cables, as well as the whole unplug reboot, replug reboot and they are recognized and re-installed but they remain missing. Any thoughts?
Much thanks,
!L
Go to shutdown and choose to restart the computer in msdos mode. At the prompt type:
scanreg/restore
and enter. Choose a registry to restore with a date that precedes the problem. Any software you've installed after the date of the restored registry will need to be reinstalled as there will be no record of it in the registry.
When it's done, reboot and see if your cdroms are back.
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Dave, thanks for giving me something new to try. Unfortunately on the first two go's, system restore registry failed. On the third attempt it went through, but I think that was only to yesterday, and I've rebooted with no cd drives in sight.Hmm m.
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Run regedit and search for NOIDE. Delete any references you find.
Are there any yellow ? or ! in device manager in system in control panel?
Go to performance in system in control panel and see if anything is running in msdos compatibility mode.
Is your problem associated with any hardware or software changes?
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Taking it to task, I attempted a NOIDE seach but came up empty. There are some yellow alerts in device manager, but they are related to a special function of my soundcard as well as my ethernet. These have been that way for a while now and, I think, out of the realm of the CD issue.On a whim I tried to reboot with only one drive plugged in and again it was recognized in the boot process but not found once in windows.
There are some drives running in MS-DOS compatability mode. Is there something I can do there?
On the hardware front, I installed a second hard drive a week ago and had a couple days of functional coexistance, so I didn't see it as a direct culprit. Windows media player convinced me into a full upgrade somewhere along the line and I've had spybot running every now and then for a month. Those two often disagree over changes to the registry. I've uninstalled the windows media player and maybe should kill spybot too. There was also a 128 meg USB flash drive that I had been trying to work under windows 98se. And finally, I've tried to upgrade to windows XP, but the upgrade hasn't gone through because when I boot off the cd to run the upgrade the program can not confirm that I have windows 98se and qualify, even though that's what was factory installed from the getgo.
Whew.
So about that dos compatability factor. Sounds like there might be something there.
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A little more info on the MS-DOS compatability mode. Both partitions of both hard drives are listed as running in this mode, C:, D:, E:, and F:. These are also the drives I can see in my computer along with A: 3 1/2" floppy. The CD drives used to be E and F before the install of the second hard drive, but they did show up for a couple days as G: and H:, I believe.
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Yeah, usually a drive in msdos compatiblity mode won't show up in 'my computer' or be accessed by any software. But the fix is often hard to find. That's why a scanreg/restore is often the only thing to do. It's like saying, 'I don't know what the problem is so maybe reverting the registry back to a time when it worked OK will fix it.'
A couple things to check:
Go to device manager and expand 'hard disk controllers'. Open the master IDE controller and click the 'settings' tab. The dual IDE channels setting is usually 'default'. You might also set it to 'both'.
Then run msconfig and click 'advanced' and make sure 'force compatibility mode disk access' is not checked.
Also, post back contents of c:\config.sys. You can open it with something like notepad and then copy and paste it to your next post.
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In hard disk controllers I'm only showing one: Intel(r) 82801AA Ultra ATA Controller.No forced compatability mode disk access checked as viewed in the msconfig.
Here's my config.sys:
DEVICE=C:\ESSAUDIO.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.exe NOEMS
DOS=HIGH,UMB,AUTO
FILESHIGH=80
BUFFERSHIGH=40,4
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\CPQIDECD.SYS /D:IDECD001
SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM /P /E:2048
In my searches I did learn about making a bootable 1.44 meg floppy to work on IDE drivers in windows 98se. I will try and scrounge up a floppy somewheres in town and give that a shot. Here's the link:http://www.cdrom-drivers.com/drivers/52/52116.htm
Thanks again.
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That's just a standard 98 bootdisk. You can make one yourself by going to add/remove programs in control panel and click the 'startup disk' tab. Assuming the cdrom is good, booting from a bootdisk will give you access to the cdrom, but only in dos and only when booting from the bootdisk. It won't affect whether windows sees the drive or not.
A few other things to try:
Remove the master IDE controller in device manager and then reboot. 98 will set it up again and may fix it that way.
Reinstall the 98 chipset drivers for your motherboard.
Run msconfig, click 'selective startup' and uncheck config.sys and autoexec.bat.
Exit to dos and at the prompt type:
scanreg/fix
and enter to rebuild the registry.
You may also want to do a google search for msdos compatiblilty mode to see if you find anything that specifically applies to your system.
Another thing would be to remove one of the registry keys and let window rebuild it. But first see if any of the above suggestion have an affect.
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Does the Intel(r) 82801AA Ultra ATA count as the master IDE controller. I can't find anything else that I can tell is it. Deleting that and a reboot got us back to where we were. I'm not quite sure how to reinstall the chipset drivers, but I did attempt through the device manager to update the driver for system device>motherboard resources and recieved a message that it was using the latest available. When I tried this with the Intel 82801AA Ultra ATA controller the system crashed on three attempts.. . error writing to c:\.Part two coming.. .
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Ok. The scanreg/fix went through, but the problem has not been alleviated. I will look on google for the ms dos compatability deal and see if I can upgrade to Win Xp. I might need more help with the chipset drivers and removal of registry keys.hasta siempre,
!L
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Yeah, that's the master IDE controller. For it to be identified as 'Ultra ATA' controller means there must have already been a chipset update. But perhaps those drivers got corrupted or there may be a new version on the motherboard manufacturer's site.
It's normal for the update procedure to tell you that the best drivers are already installed. It will do that unless you have the drivers already and can navigate to the drive/folder containing the newer ones.
The error writing to c: may be a problem. You might try running scandisk on it.
What size HD is it?
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20 gig. I tried running scandisk but it kept restarting due to other programs accessing the c: drive. Thought I had disabled enough for it to complete overnight, but woke up to find it still never made it through. Will keep on it.
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Well, I, uh, backed up all my files and upgraded to windows xp, re-formatting my original hard drive and started from scratch. And that took care of it. Both cd drives are back. I appreciate all the advice and learned much along the way. Hopefully someone else in a similar boat may find these recommendations and end their woes more simply than I did.Now I'm just hoping that there will be less work getting all my other apps up and running under xp. I needed to upgrade for other reasons anyway, and this all pressed the issue.
Oh yes, and Dave, THANKSINCAPS.
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You're welcome. Sorry we couldn't get it fixed for 98 but at least you've got it going now.
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