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General discussion

PLEASE HELP!

Mar 7, 2004 4:48AM PST

I have tried a couple of timeS to post my problem onto these forum boards but I am still having severe problems.

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 generic atapi divers from them by using drivers-guide.com. This caused me more problems as the letter drives that it installed to were not the same as
the CD letter drives and therefore it caused a conflict so I delted these generic drivers.

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 but they were still there on rebooting. When I looked in the settings device manager again it showed them as still being there.

Presently I have only the two letter drives of 'f' and 'g' on the computer.

Someone has suggested that I check the settings in safe mode, the problem is that I cannot access this mode for some reason. I have tried a number of times to hold down and press F8 and have also tried the CTRL key but to no avail.

On another note when I go into DOS the screen message always states :

>LH C:\windows\command\mscdex.exe /d:mscd0000/l:f

Device Drivers Not Found:'MSCD000'

No Valid CDROM device drivers selected

Can anyone help me please?

Any real and useful help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Denial.
Mar 7, 2004 5:22AM PST

Many fall into a form of denial that a hardware issue is present. I can't offer much help for those.

I will however note a TACTICAL ERROR in trying to use DOS CDROM drivers in Windows versions past 3.1. Windows 95 and 98 will allow use of DOS drivers, but you will find such to fail in many odd ways. The real fix for 95/98 is to remove any reference to CDROM units in the CONFIG.SYS AUTOEXEC.BAT files and have the OS support the drives natively.

Usually, all I need to do is to install the motherboard IDE drivers, set the IDE controller in the Device Manager to "Both" and reboot. If the drives are functional and configured correctly, then they just work.

If the hardware has defects, your problems will continue.

Bob

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Re:PLEASE HELP!
Mar 7, 2004 5:44AM PST

You have been offered some REAL and USEFUL help for your problem based on personal experiences both of users and those who fix user's mistakes.

Have you availed yourself of these suggestions or simply dismissed them out of hand because you didn't like them.

CD-ROMS do not tend to have a long life expectancy--especially since the manufacturing cost has dropped so low because of cheap components. Try a new drive (pricewatch.com will locate many under $30 and many of them are Reader/writers). The most complete cleaning in the world will not resurect a dead reader. (or it could be damaged ribbon cables which often do not show damage)

Windows does not need any drivers for the CD-ROMs because it has its own ATAPI drivers incorporated into the OS. Any ATAPI drivers you found are likely DOS drivers. Because Windows has its own drivers the OS will find and load them no matter how often you delete the drives from Device Manager.

If you can't get into Safe Mode there is a chance you have a fouled up (corrupt) OS and will simply need to reinstall it. One thing you could try BEFORE doing this is to manually alter your MSDOS.SYS file by editing it by CLOSELY following these directions (or you can simply go here http://sac-ftp.externet.hu/utiltask4.html and scroll down to item 196 and download MSDOSED v1.10 - Win95 util to edit MSDOS.SYS file) --enabling the startup menu option will allow you to simply select Safe Mode from the menu.

The message you note on booting to DOS simply indicates that you have an autoexec.bat file that runs and loads MSCDEX but you do not have a config.sys file that runs or it does not have entries pointing to the DOS CD drivers.

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Re:PLEASE HELP!
Mar 7, 2004 11:35AM PST

check your cables in back of computer the ones on the inside and press on the ones on your cdroms and see if any has worked lose