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General discussion

cd-rom problem

Feb 26, 2004 6:04AM PST

i have a gateway ess.500 with win.98se a nec cd-rom and a philips cd-rw 2400 series the problem is it will read some cd's but not others i have some cd's i burned and they work fine and audio cd's work i have a problem with data like driver inst. and software cd's any ideas

Discussion is locked

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Re:cd-rom problem
Feb 26, 2004 9:02AM PST
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Re:cd-rom problem
Feb 26, 2004 12:04PM PST

tried that no help

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Re:Re:cd-rom problem
Feb 26, 2004 10:42PM PST

First thing is to clean those disks with some window cleaner. If that fails to resolve the problem, the drive could be going, and/or the cable could be bad. Both are reasonably inexpensive. I'd try a new drive; you can always return it if it doesn't resolve the problem.

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Re:Re:Re:cd-rom problem
Feb 28, 2004 1:09PM PST

cleaned them replaced the cable cd-rw is less than a year old does it with both drives i get an error message E or d :\ is not accessible,the device it not ready

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Re:Re:Re:Re:cd-rom problem
Feb 28, 2004 6:36PM PST

This is the first post where you define 'it' from your initial question as 'both'. Makes a difference.

I go with Josh and suspect some hardware or cable problem. Are you sure the cables are connected correctly (red stripe at pin 1), and the devices configured correctly as master and/or slave?

Things to do:
a) Go into the BIOS and see what it tells you about the devices.
b) Note what the BIOS says about these devices at startup.
c) Try it with only 1 of the 2(first the CD, then the CD-RW) physically connected.

Kees

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Re:Re:Re:Re:cd-rom problem
Feb 28, 2004 8:45PM PST

1. Start with The CD-ROM drive cannot be recognized or seen by the system, or the CD-ROM driver hangs or says it cannot find the CD-ROM when it loads, and see what comes out in the wash.

2. Test a CD drive using the Windows 98 Microsoft System Information (MSINFO32.EXE) (Click to see an example screenshot) tool, which is a tool for gathering system configuration information and is intended primarily to help engineers determine information that could indicate problems with a system (click the + (plus sign) in front of "Components", and then "Multimedia").

3. If devices are recognized as attached peripherals they will be listed as resident on the "System Configuration Summary" (BIOS Startup Screen) at boot. Press the Pause key as soon as you see this screen start displaying so it can be stopped and read. Press any other key to continue. If the CMOS/BIOS does not recognize and display peripheral information on this screen, Windows certainly will not.

4. Dismount and test whether the CD-ROM drive works on another computer. Don't do anything and just purchase a new CD drive and/or data cable. Add the old CD drive to the bone yard and you'll have a stack like mine after a while.

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Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:cd-rom problem
Mar 2, 2004 2:45AM PST

This is an older method to check cdrom drives but very effective. Use a 98 boot floppy to start up the system, and use any cd rom disk, which once you choose to start with cdrom support, the disk should spin up. DOS is an older but still effective troubleshooting tool for hardware issues.