driver problem

[playboy99]

hi,

When i boot my computer it will not detect my cdrom drive. It leaves me in dos with only an A promet after a ultimate boot disk starts my pc. Is there a boot disk that will recogonize a cdrom driver??? I Need help bad!!!

[Mr1drful]

The first, and most important thing to do is make sure you have the correct driver for your IDE cd-rom drive. If your computer already loads your cd-rom on startup then you are in good shape. If not, you must find a driver that will work with your cd-rom. These can usually be found on the web site of the manufacturer of your cd-rom. Next you will need to make a boot disk for your cd-rom. To do this insert a blank, virus free, disk into your floppy drive. If Windows is up and running, go to Start/Settings/Control Panel/Add/Remove Programs/Startup Disk and follow directions. (This gives you a bootable floppy plus some handy utilities.) If not, go to a DOS prompt and type "format a: /s". This will make the floppy a system boot disk. Copy the driver for your cd-rom and the file "mscdex.exe" (found in the c:\windows\command directory) to the disk. Go to notepad or type "edit" in DOS to open a text editor. Type "DEVICE=A:\WHATEVER /D:NAME1" replacing WHATEVER with the name of your cd-rom driver and NAME1 with the name of your cd-rom(usually something like MSCD001). It doesn't matter what you call the cd-rom as long as it's the same in both config and autoexec. Save this file to your boot disk as "config.sys".

Next click on new in the file menu of the notepad window. In the blank window type "A:\mscdex.exe /d:NAME1 /L:d" replacing NAME1 with the same name you used in the config.sys file. If for some reason you cannot have your cd-rom designated as the D: drive then change the part /L:X and replace the X with whatever drive you want your cd-rom to be. Save this file to your boot disk as "autoexec.bat". If your current autoexec.bat and config.sys files already have lines similar to these in them, then just put those same lines into the config.sys and autoexec.bat on your boot disk, but edit them so the drivers are loaded off of the A: drive. Also you can see what driver your cd-rom uses and copy it directly to the boot disk.

Now that this is done, you must test it. ***Be sure your disk is virus free*** Place this disk in your floppy drive and restart your computer. Your computer will startup and stop in DOS. You will see that it attempted to load your cd-rom. If you see any errors in the lines above the A:\ then you are probably using the wrong driver or you typed something wrong. If it seems to be working OK type "D:", if you get an error that says invalid drive specification or any other error then the disk is not working correctly and you may have to try another driver. If you see that it worked put in your windows98 cd-rom and type "cd\win98", if you see that the directory changes to d:\win98 it is working fine; GOOD. But, be sure that you're loading the cd-rom driver off the A: drive. To check open config.sys and autoexec.bat and make sure that the paths start with A: not C:

[Murf]

Mr1drful advise is sound , very revelent and will do the trick. However, maybe misunderstood your question.

You indicated that you are using a boot disk and the boot disk (ultimate boot disk) is not loading your cdrom driver. Go Here (http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm) and download applicable bootdisk, then double click on it to expand to a clean floppy.

Now boot with this floppy.

If this does not work, then as Mr1drful indicates, you probably have an older cdrom that may or may not be connected to your sound card.

In this case you will have to find the drivers for that cdrom and sound card to get it to work.

Advise if the above does not work,

[playboy99]

Murf,
I tired it did not work. I will go in to more detail.

I am trying to boot up Windows 98 with a load of problems!

I press power and it does the memory test ok and everything then we get the problems!

I am asked to insert start up disk which I do and it goes through everything and gets to the bit which says boot with CD Rom and I press enter on that

then it does some test things and comes up with...

windows 98 has detected that drive c does not contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition. and gives me three possible causes.

The it says at the very end...

Device driver not found: 'MSCD001'
No valid CDROM device drivers selected

I don't know anything about what to do and need serious help

[Murf]

OK,

Using the windows 98 boot disk, let it boot to the A:\> prompt

At the A:\> prompt type the following:

sys c: (hit <enter> key)

Now reboot without the floppy.

If this does not work.

Reboot and when the post screen comes up hit your delete key to get into your SETUP (CMOS), find the menu item that says something like Auto Detect IDE Drives and click on it, see if it finds your drives. If it dose then SAVE & EXIT and let it continue booting.

[playboy99]

After i tried sys c: it says invalid function.

I reboot and the primary ide master is not installed.

[Murf]

Ok, need system spec's:

Does it now boot up at all into Windows?

All kinds of problems. When did this start? Added any hardware/software, then this started?

When you boot now where do you end up? If it does boot into windows then devce manager is not showing the Primary HDD Controller?

Did you try and get into SETUP and do a auto detect?

[playboy99]

Does not boot in to window. When i boot up it stops after it says floppy a installed. It then gives me a line saying " insert bootable media in to correct drive. Only reads the a drive. Before when i booted the a drive was the last thing then it went in to windows. Before i saw that it recognized my cd drive and the hard disk but now it does not.


I was installing win 98se on to my computer. It went throught the hour set up and it rebooted i told me i was starting windows for the first time i continued to load windows then it rebooted again.

This is where i am right now.