Replacement CD Drive Doesn't Show Up in WIN95

[RH610]

Got replacement CD drive for Dell laptop with WIN95B. This is the official replacement drive from Dell.

Old drive showed up as E in Windows Explorer, but didn't work.
New drive does not show up in Explorer at all (E is skipped)
Can boot to drive and read from it in DOS.
Nothing in config.sys or autoexec.bat
No MS-DOS Compatibility warnings in performance tab.
No exclamation points in device manager.
Drive passes all Dell diagnostic tests.
Have removed IDE controllers in device manager and reinstalled.
Did above in registry.
No NOIDE or BADIDE entries in registry.
All I did was replace the drive.

I am out of ideas and Dell is no help.

Thanks

 

[jmatt]

If this was a brand new drive , did you format it 1st ?

Is it jumpered as master ?

 

[Marcs41]

I don't think 'formatting' a CDROM drive will help, certainly not when you don't see it ;-)
And as far as I know, a laptop does not have jumpers !!!

Ok, seriously, try to run the Detect new hardware from the control panel.
Also, make sure that for some reason, there is no LASTDRIVE statement interfering in you config files (autoexec-config.sys) Just REM them if in doubt.

 

[ringring7]

have you tried putting a win98 startup floppy disk in? If it boots from that,and the cdrom device loads then the cdrom itself is probably ok and its a software issue. if not then try another cdrom (if you can)
If it works try editting the autoexec and config and put the DOS commands into to load the cdrom. i.e. devicehigh= blah blah blah (you know the stuff) that will definetely work if the cdrom is physically ok. I find sometimes win95 has trouble with cdrom.

 

[milan0vich]

I say the drivers are the issue, download the latest. Must be because "DOS" has loaded the generic driver, that is why DOS sees it and windows is aware of it (with out conflicts), but can't operate it (no drive letter assigned) so it must be the driver... give it a try!

Cheers

 

[jmatt]

Opp's , sorry , answered that completly wrong .

 

[Kento]

Did you remove the old drive from device manager? Go there and click the plus sign next to cd-rom. Then remove eveything that's listed underneath and restart the computer. Windows should detect and reinstall the drive at startup.

 

[juggy]

Sounds to me more like config. If the CDROM finds it booting from a disk is this disk booting up with its own config is Device=x:\xxx\xxx.sys and in auto mscdex /d:xxxxx x's being the driver or are these actually on your C:\ someone stated that it sees it in dos but this is from a floppy and its stated that the configs are empty. Personally I would wait until it says starting windows 95. Press F8 and then choose command prompt only. If you can see the CD Rom then the drivers are loaded in dos. If not then copy the driver off the A:\ to the c:\ somewhere meaning full. Take the lines out of the config.sys and autoexec.bat and put them into the c:\config.sys and a:\autoexec.bat if needed. Then reboot and do the same F8 command prompt only. If you can now see the CD ROM reboot and go into windows and see if its there. I have had this problem before and sometimes just loading the drivers once to the PC for dos (not booting off a disk or cd) does the trick and even if you remove the lines from the config it still stays. Try a little program called UNIIDE may work may not.. If all the lines are in and working in dos and not seen in windows... > ... Flatten it and reinstall!!