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General discussion

PLEASE HELP

Mar 1, 2004 7:04AM PST

I have tried a couple of time to post my problem onto these forum boards but I have not received any useful advice so I am trying again. If no-one can help me I would rather they just say so rather than it could be that the CD drive maybe old or need cleaning - this is not the case!

The problem that I have is concerning my CD drives. I have a Packard Bell computer and the first drive came with the computer and is a Goldstar CD-Rom-CRD-8240B and the second I installed a couple of years ago and is a Toshiba DVD-Rom SD-R1002. The problem is that neither of these drives seem to be reading any of the files on the CD's that I place into them. All that occurs when I click onto 'my computer' is that it shows that there are no documents when there clearly are.


What I have done so far is firstly to clean the drives with a multimedia laser lens cleaner. Then I installed new drivers from them by using drivers-guide.com. I even deleted the drives from from the settings device manager in the hope that the computer would recognise
them on re-booting and ask whether I wanted to install them but this wasn't the case and for some reason they were still there on rebooting. When I looked in the settings device manager again it showed them as still being there.

There also appear to be 4 letter drives d,e,f&g when there are only two. I know that this maybe causing the conflict but how do I rectify it?

When the Toshiba drive is attempting to be read whether in 'my computer' or internet explorer etc it just hangs.

Someone may suggest that I should reinstall them from the Windows CD's that I have. The problem is that since this is a Packard Bell computer, this would reformat the hard drive. I have far, far, far too
much stuff on there to do this.

Any real and useful help (rather than the usual it maight be or or or or or) would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Re:PLEASE HELP
Mar 1, 2004 7:57AM PST

I'm assuming you don't have XP...so reboot the computer, and press the F8 key a couple of times after the first black and white boot screen leaves...Choose SAFEMODE from the menu that appears. You might have to experiment with when you press F8 to get it right because many times you will be a hair too late to get the menu. If so, just reboot and try it again.

When you get to safemode, go to Device Mgr and click the plus marks in front of the CDROM, the DISK DRIVES, and the FLOPPY/HARD DISK CONTROLLERS.

Anything that has a duplicate entry listed should be removed as well as the original (so that windows doesn't install a duplicate again as new hardware when you reboot).

Once these items are corrected/removed, reboot the computer to normal windows, and see if your stuff is working now, with only one entry for each item now.

TONI

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If you are using windows 98, you should not have to install any
Mar 1, 2004 10:43AM PST

drivers. Windows already has them.

If you do what Toni H says in safe mode and remove ALL of the CD drives there, then when you reboot in normal mode Windows should find the CD devices and install the drivers.

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Re:PLEASE HELP
Mar 2, 2004 10:48AM PST

What really happened? You don't want useless advice, but what happened? You come home one day & neither worked anymore? Did you add another IDE device and forget to change the settings on the devices from Master to slave or vice versa? Are the ribbon cables connected (tightly) on the mb / device? I would recommend taking the other's advice, but only install one cd, not both. Then see if that goes well. Then try the other. P/S: your packard bell install probably has the full windows pre-install files already on your hard drive, so you really don;'t need to use those recovery cd's to utilize windows drivers.

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Backup!
Mar 2, 2004 8:02PM PST

Considering that hard disks do fail at unpredictable moments, either because they simply are mechanical or because some virus thinks it's time to mess up the FAT, you risk losing 'far, far, far too much stuff'.

I strongly advise you to invest in a backup solution. A CD- or DVD-burner nowadays is the usual device to do so. You're living on a vulcano right now.

Better get your CD/DVD-reader up and running first, however. I agree with the general line of the above responses:
- check hardware (it might not be old, it might still be broken), switch settings and cables
- delete devices in Safe Mode in Device Manager
- first get the CD working, with the CD/DVD physically disconnected
- check the devices in the BIOS
- try another IDE connection

A very nice tool is a Windows 98 boot diskette with CD support. Disconnect the hard drive (if it is NTFS, you don't write about your OS) and see what a simple dir d: (or whatever drive letter the CD-drive gets) tells you. PC's still (like in 1980) can run very well with only a diskette drive, and no harddrive.
Any error message coming up is clearly not related to Windows (drivers, settings), but only to hardware and BIOS-settings. If MS-DOS doesn't see the contents of a CD, Windows certainly will not either. The devices may not be old, they maybe defective anyway. Or wrongly connected.

Kees