I simply wanted to install a new samsung CDRW - easy I thought -. 2 hard disks happily co-exist currently on IDE-0, left them alone. A standard 52 speed CDROM on IDE-1 set as primary master. I opened the case, swapped the jumper to make CDROM the slave, jumpered the CDRW as master and plugged the ribbon cable on in the correct way - CDRW on the end, CDROM in the middle with both 'pin1's' lined up as they should be. Booted the machine (win98SE), no problems, checked the properties - hey presto both drives reported and configured correctly. Thought I might install the packaged software through thte CDRW.... audio disk! the drive thinks it's an audio disk. Tried all sorts of CD's - all reported as audio disks. Tried the disk in the CDROM no problem. Looked to see if there was any packaged driver software supplied but there was none. Took the whole thing appart checked all jumpers, pins and cables no problem. Installed Nero 5.5 OK through CD ROM, won't run, says that the 'exe' file reporting wrong version. NEW PROBLEM. Unplugged CDROM from system CDRW works fine on it's own (except software) - think I'll install Easy CD. Plugged CDROM in again and back came my audio disks. Swapped masters and slaves including ribbon - same problem with the CDRW. Can anyone help please....

Open Control Panel and go to Multimedia. Click on the CD Music tab and see if the CDRW is listed. Since you made the CDRW the Master, which is where the CDROM was it's now taken that drive letter. HTH

Windows seems to have problems with two CD drives installed on the same cable in some systems. I suggest putting a hard drive and a CD drive on each cable.

I have just about the same problem. I have just attempted to install a new CDRW (Samsung SW 252F) onto my PC running Windows 98SE. It appears to have installed okay up to the point where I actually try to access a disk (the Device manager correctly identifies the drive and it appears in explorer). When I put any disk in, the drive seems to think it is either an audio disk, it is blank with lable "CD" or the lable appears but when I click to open I get the message "A device attached to the disk is not functioning". It did recognise the disk a couple of times and I did manage to get the drive to write a CD. But mostly it doesn't work. I have tried a number of things (correctly changing jumpers etc): Putting the drive on the primary IDE as a slave to the hard drive; Putting it on the secondary IDE either as master or slave to a DVD ROM. I have also re-installed Windows (I used the new drive up to the point where Windows 98 took over and the drive was lost). I have even tried another version of the same drive replaced by the shop where I purchased it. So can anyone suggest where the problem is? Its either the motherboard, the drive (unlikely given that I swapped it) or software (unlikely as I've re-installed everything unless there is an issue with the drive that I don't know about - plausible or co-incidence?). The shop owner suggested that the motherboard/IDE could have a problem but before I buy a new one I'd like to be sure. Can anyone suggest a diagnostic tool to check the IDE? PCcheck didn't help. Thanks in advance. Karl

I have solved my problem. I finally decided to update the firmware (only one level). Everything seems to be working fine now as a result. I was originally put off doing this firstly because the Samsung website warned against getting it wrong, there didn't seem to be much benefit to it (upgrading from level 800 to 801) and the engineer where I bought the CDRW said that it probably wasn't necessary. Anyway it turns out to be necessary. Its just that the English used on the Samsung website isn't very clear. Hope this helps. Karl Stephen

Mine started doing the same thing, for no apparent reason, and I have only the one CDR drive. All CDs are reported as audio. Control panel-hardware shows CDR okay. At around the same time, I stopped getting sound from my AC97 audio/speakers, and all this occurred after I installed a software modem (Creative modem blaster PCI) on which I disabled the audio capability. Any suggestions?