CDROMs not recognized by Windows 98

[hes3]

I'll first describe my relevant hardware and configuration. I am ATTEMPTING >:-< to upgrade to an ABIT kt7a-raid MB (CPU: 1 Gig 133 FSB Athlon T-bird) and am installing a GeForce 3 64 at the same time. No overclocking, nothing exotic. I have two IDE HDs in the Primary, and two CDROMs in the Secondary, a TDK CD-RW (master) and a Kenwood 52X (slave), running a fresh (several times fresh!) install of Windows 98 on a newly-formatted (several times newly-formatted!) 60 Gig HD, partitioned 50/50. btw, in my previous PC incarnation, the hardware I've transferred worked with no problems. Okay. Well, once upon a time, a MB upgrade was a breeze - THIS one has turned into a real tornado! ONE of my current problems is that Windows will not recognize my CDROMs. They are located in POST and listed in BIOS, and if I use the Windows 98 startup floppy, they will be assigned and may be accessed just fine. When I run through a normal bootup, however, they simply >poof< disappear once Windows has loaded. No assigned drive letters, no mention of CD-anything in Device Manager - nothing. Now, at one point, I DID have the CDs in Windows, because I (once or twice) installed the VIA software (for the MB) from CD and attempted to use the GeForce software CD to install the video. I ended up using downloaded drivers from the internet for both of these software sets, however, since the using the sw that came with the GeForce caused my system to hang once it reached Windows, necessitating one of the numerous Windows installs I have had to make during this unexpectedly long-term project! But I digress. I made no CD-related device assignments in autoexec.bat or config.sys, but I know that's not necessary and hasn't been for a long time. Hey, there weren't even driver disks in the box with these CDs! So, bottom line - I'm at a wall and am WAY open to suggestions! Thanks in advance! (If you can help me get past this hurdle, maybe I'll regale you with my SCSI woes - but, one hill at a time!)

 

[JohnS9051]

Try this:
In Device Manager under Hard disk controller:
Do you have the PCI Bus Master IDE Controller installed?
If not, install it from the motherboard's CD. You will have to boot from the start-up floppy and copy the drivers to the hard drive and install from there.
If you have the Bus Master controller installed:
Do you have both Primary and Secondary IDE controllers enabled?
If not, open the Bus Master controller dialog box and under the Settings tab enable both IDE channels.
Let me know if this helps or not.
Good luck.

John

 

[hes3]

Thanks, John, for your reply. In the meantime, I have realized that another factor I previously neglected to mention is having bearing on my setup problems. I have a ZIP drive connected to my parallel port. I was unable to install it from within windows (although that doesn't seem as though it should be relevant because the ZIP setup simply does what I ended up doing manually anyway, that is, installing and running the GUEST program from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file). The bottom line: it appears that GUEST's drive letter assignment blows out the CDROMs. If I disconnect the ZIP from LPT1 (or remove GUEST from AUTOEXEC.BAT altogether), the CDROMs appear in Windows. I tried making a &quot;hard drive-letter assignment&quot; to the CDROMs, allowing some room for the ZIP, and when the ZIP isn't present, those assignments take as they should. At this point, however, the ZIP and the CDROMs are mutually exclusive. I am online from work now (I haven't even CONSIDERED trying to install my netork card yet), so I haven't actually checked, but I would say it's a safe bet that the PCI Bus Master IDE Controller is installed and both the Primary and Secondary IDE controllers are enabled in BIOS, since the CDROMs would never come up at all if that were not the case - right? Anyway, any further ideas, please, send them along! Thanks.

 

[JohnS9051]

The IDE controllers must be enabled because as you said the CD-ROMs would not come up at all if that were not the case.
It seems that your problem is with the Zip drive. I am not familiar with parallel port Zip drives. But, I don't think you need to run Guest from autoexec.bat to assign a drive letter.
Is the Zip drive's driver installed correctly?
Does it show up under SCSI controllers in Device Manager without conflicts?
Can you run Guest from Windows?
I think if the driver is installed correctly Windows 98 will detect it and assign a drive letter for the Zip drive like it does for the CD-ROM.
Check Iomega's website for the latest driver. They also have an extensive diagnostic procedure and a forum that should be able to help with this problem.

http://www.iomega.com/support/index.html

Sorry I couldn't offer more help. Good luck.

John

 

[edfair]

Guest on earlier was for DOS only. Guest95 was for W95. Suspect that 98 will be the same way. And it was intended for use by command line. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.