Hello forum members, Here's a rundown of my current problem. I'm running windows98 (first edition) on a Pentium 3 800mhz machine. My original configuration had the usual drive setup i.e C drive, D drive (cd rom) and an E drive (cd rw). I recently bought a USB Flash Pen Drive to move files between a laptop and the main computer. The pen drive has caused real problems with the main computer. Installing the pen drive on the laptop was fine (the OS is Win XP home edition) and the install of the pen drive on the main machine seemed to be fine (after downloading drivers from the manufacturers web site). However, after swapping a few files and turning off the main machine, the problems started. When I booted up the main machine, I was greeted with the scandisk screen as if I hadn't shut down properly. The scandisk went through it's thing and the machine seemed to boot normally. But when I stuck a CD Rom into the D drive it wouldn't read it. I subsequently discovered that the D drive and E drive had gone from the 'my computer' folder. The D drive was still present in the device manager but it now had the yellow question mark icon next to it. The E drive (cd rw) had gone from the 'my computer' folder AND the device manager. It just seems to have vanished from windows! Both drives are still recognized on the black screen as the computer starts up (before Windows starts to load) but I cannot seem to get the configuration back to the way it was. I have uninstalled the USB pen drive (which was assigned the letter F) and appeared as a removable drive. These are the fixes I have tried: Removing the devices in device manager (both in normal AND in safe mode). Windows does not run plug and play or detect new hardware, it simply puts the devices back where they were with the yellow question mark still on the CD Rom drive. All drivers for the D drive and E drive are in place, removing these and reinstalling seems to make no difference. I have removed the tower casing and physically removed both drives (disconnected them from the IDE cable) and then shut down, I then reconnected them and booted up. No joy there, the devices appear again as if they had never been disconnected and windows still does not run plug and play or detect any new hardware. Deleting autoexec.bat and config.sys. Looking for the noide.inf file in the Registry. No such file is present in the Registry. Installing a noide.inf file. Doesn't do anything. I have scoured the net for fixes. It seems a good few people have had this problem with Win98 and pen drives, but the solves posted don't seem to work for me. ------------------ There are a couple more pieces of information which may help in diagnosing my problem: Since the problem started, my C drive light remains on continually until I put a CD in the D drive. When the disc has finished spinning, the hard drive light goes out. In the performance section of system properties I have two messages that say 'Compatibility mode paging reduces overall system performance' and 'Drive X is using an MS-DOS compatibility mode file system'. It seems that the hard drive (C) is using this MS-DOS compatibility mode file system. How do I get that sorted out? When trying to reinstall the D drive manually using 'install new hardware' I get a message saying: 'Warning, your hardware may not be set to use the resources listed' I then gives me the option to set the I/O range, but having set this to a few different ranges, the D drive will still not read CDs nor does it appear in the 'my computer' folder. Is there a standard setting for the I/O range of a CD Rom drive? I would be REALLY grateful if anyone could offer a fix to get at least the D drive up and running again. This problem has got me screaming in frustration! It seems to me that the D drive would start working if I could find the right I/O range, then I could move on to sorting out the CD rw drive. Or am i barking up the wrong tree in thinking the D drive problem is resource settings based? Any help would be HUGELY appreciated. Peegee.

Hi Peegee, The reason you are not seeing the cd drives is because of the compatability mode issue. This can be caused for several different reasons. The real-mode drivers are being loaded and are conflicting with the Windows. I do not believe this is your problem because this is normally done through the autoexec.bat and config.sys files. The reason the NoIDE entry is created in the registry is because of the compatability mode issue. When real mode drivers load the NoIDE is created in the registry in order to allow the computer to load Windows so you can troubleshoot the problem. If the entry was not inserted you most likely would not be able to load Windows. Where are you looking at in the registry for the NoIDE entry? It will be located here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet \Services\VxD\IOS Do all of the following then restart the computer. Remove any of the devices that are showing a conflict in the device manager. Remove the NoIDE entry if it exist. Rename autoexec.bat and config.sys to .old. I have also seen where reinstalling the motherboard drivers has corrected the problem and believe this may correct yours. HTH Mesich

If I might jump in here. USB device can be very particular about the way they are installed. Almost always you have to install the software before the hardware, except on pen devices. So after doing what Mesich suggested, if it still doesn't work, go into the Device Manager and Sytems, and delete the USB hub and root. Shut down Windows normally and reboot. Make sure the USB drive is NOT connected of course and see if your drive letters come back. If they do, then reinstall the pen drive. Larry

Hi Larry, Good point, I have experienced that as well. Best Regards, Mesich