how do you have bios look for a driver because i just reformatted my computer and i cant get my cd/dvd rom drive to work

I'm assuming that your cd/dvd rom drive worked before you reformatted your computer. Did you use this same drive that is installed right now to load an operating system cd to format the hard drive? Does the bios recognize the drive, but your operating system does not? Are you able to boot off of a cd? Does If the bios doesn't recognize the cd/dvd rom drive then you would you need to check cable/power/jumper settings, not driver issues. If the cd/dvd drive worked fine with the bios before, and no hardware changes were made, then there should be no reason why it wouldn't work now.

Your Operating System please? If it's windows, which version are you using?

Is your computer a recent one or a quite old one?

i will be running windows xp
i think i got it around 97 98

i also lost my drivers and did not make any back ups before i reformated

im not able to boot from a cdrom drive yet. when i go to cdsetup.exe it says it cant locate mscdex.exe
do you know were i can get this

What makes you believe that it doesn't work? Have you tried to Boot from the CD and had no success?

Was the system a new one in 97/98, or a secondhand unit? Is the BIOS configured to use CD-ROM as '1st boot device'? Does the BIOS POST information indicate that the drive is detected?

yes it was new custom i reformatted with the a: drive i
sorry for asking what does a bios do ?is it like a translater

what is mscdex.exe i have a hitachi gd-2500 cd/dvd drive
and it says its not ready reading drive d

clasher, for starters could you please click on the 'Edit' button at bottom of your post to add further comments, instead of making multiple posts one after another. Or better still, wait until you've typed out your entire comment before clicking on 'Submit'. This is a forum, not irc, mate.


Next, which version of Windows are you trying to install at the moment? If it's Windows 98, what are you trying to install it from. You should be trying to boot the system from a Windows 98 Startup diskette, which would have mscdex.exe included on it.

If you are trying to install Windows XP from a Windows CD, then you should be making changes in BIOS to allow the system to boot directly from the CD.

BIOS is the 'Setup' routine of the machine itself. You usually access it by pressing <Delete> when the machine is powering up.