I went to the BIOS setup and make everything thing to auto detect, after I save the BIOS setup, for some reason, at boot up the BIOS detected the cd-rom drive and when it boot into windows 98, double clicked on my computer, the cd-rom did not show up. I tried it with a brand new cd-rom drive as well, and windows 98 still can't detect it. Any help will be appreciated, Thanks.

http://www.mesich.com/cdrommissing.html

In addition to Mesich's tip: A cdrom that's detected in the bios but not windows is usually due to it running in msdos compatibility mode. Go to system in control panel and click on performance to check that. If there is a hardware conflict or other problem with the IDE controllers you could try deleting them in device manager and then reboot to see if windows will straighten out the problem on it's own. For newer motherboards you may need a chipset update. Sometimes things loaded in config.sys or autoexec.bat will cause it. I've seen older cdrom drivers loaded in config.sys that cause it. You can run msconfig and click 'selective startup' and then click off the loading of those 2 files. Then 'apply', 'OK' and reboot. If that doesn't help you can run msconfig again and click them back on. If the problem isn't associated with any hardware changes and seems to have come out of the blue, you can exit to dos and at the c:\windows> prompt type: scanreg/restore and enter. This is just a way of saying, "I don't know what the problem is so I'll take the computer back to a time that it worked right." Choose a registry to restore with a date that precedes the problem. Windows normally keeps 4 backup registries, one for each of the last 4 days you've used the computer. So it you wait too long, scanreg/restore won't work. Any software you've installed after the date of the restored registry will need to be reinstalled, even if the icon is still showing on the desktop. Often running older dos or win 3.1 software can force msdos compatibility mode. It depends on how much the installation of these programs alters the startup files. These suggestions will probably fix the problem about 75% of the time. If you find you're in the remaining 25% you might want to do a google search for "msdos compatibility mode" and see if any matches are similar to your circumstances.

Hi DAVEINCAPS, I have been meaning to update that page for quite some time now. I just added a couple of things along with some credits that have been missing. Best Regards, Mesich

Yeah, I went into more detail this time as it seems to be a common problem. I thought I'd just link back to this thread instead of recomposing each time. But since you've got it on your page I'll probably just point there. However, I have found that scanreg/restore seems to be the best solution when the problem isn't associated with system changes. Periodically one of my computers would lose the cd burner. I would do the noide search and find nothing and there were no changes in hardware or software. Scanreg/restore always worked, indicating the problem was transient but yet permanently recorded in the registry or .ini files. Based on my experiences I had been recommending scanreg/restore as the first option. Now I'm thinking some knowledge of the recent history of the system may ascertain a more specific reason for the problem.

I think I have got all the info on the page now. You may want to check it over and make sure I haven't left anything out or am incorrect in one of the steps. CDROM Missing in Windows I wonder how Joseph is coming along? Best Regards, Mesich