Member Avatar for clasher097

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

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A short, practical summary that fills gaps in the thread: two different failure modes are being mixed—(A) the motherboard/BIOS never detects the optical drive (hardware/jumper/cable level), and (B) the operating system or installer does not have the right DOS/driver support for the drive. and covered boot order and basic hardware checks; the checklist below supplies the missing, concrete diagnostics and the common pitfalls that cause installers to “not see” a working drive.

  • Verify BIOS detection first. Enter Setup (often Delete or F2 at POST) and look under Standard CMOS / Integrated Peripherals / IDE Configuration for an ATAPI entry showing the Hitachi model. If no device appears, power down and check the Molex power plug, reseat or replace the 40‑pin IDE cable (observe the red stripe = pin‑1), and move the optical drive to the primary IDE channel by itself.
  • Jumper and cable rules. For two devices on one IDE cable, one must be Master and the other Slave (or both set to Cable Select on a CS cable). A mismatched jumper will hide the drive. Drive labels or the drive face usually show the correct jumper positions.
  • Boot/installer behavior. A genuine, bootable XP CD will show the “Press any key to boot from CD” prompt; that prompt must be acknowledged or the system continues to the next boot device. After XP copies files and restarts, the CD should not be booted again or setup can loop—either remove the disc for the second reboot or set HDD ahead of CD for subsequent boots.
  • What mscdex.exe means. mscdex is the MS‑DOS CD extension used by Win9x/boot floppies; it is not part of native XP setup. If the motherboard uses an uncommon SATA/RAID controller, an additional driver may be required during XP setup (the legacy F6 floppy method).

Confirmation by testing the drive and CD in another PC or with a known-good boot disc isolates hardware from media/installer problems. Static precautions and correct jumper placement are often the decisive fixes.

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All 31 Replies

Member Avatar for i686-linux

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.

Member Avatar for Catweazle

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

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

Member Avatar for clasher097

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

Member Avatar for clasher097

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

Member Avatar for clasher097

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

Member Avatar for Catweazle

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?

Member Avatar for clasher097

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

Member Avatar for clasher097

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

Member Avatar for Catweazle

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.

Member Avatar for clasher097

sorry, im going to install win xp but im using a win ME boot disk is that what im doing wrong and can i make a boot dist from another computer that is running xp and use it on mine?

when i bought my computer it came with windows 98 than i upgraded to windows xp before i reformated the computer

when your in bios what do you changeto have the cd om drive work?

Member Avatar for Catweazle

If you have Windows XP on CD, you don't need a boot disk.

Enter BIOS setup when you start the machine. Find the enties for Boot sequence and set 1st Boot device to CD-ROM, and all other boot devices to 'Disabled'. Pop your Windows CD in the drive, Save and exit from bios setup, and watch for the 'Press any key to boot from CD' message that will be briefly shown.

Then follow this guide: http://gtadatabase.web1000.com/windows/windows.html

You will be asked at some point to insert your Windows Me CD if the version you have is an upgrade disk for Windows XP. You only need the Windows Me disk for verification.

You will also get the opportunity to remove the existing partition on the hard drive. At this point, it is a goood idea to do so, create a new partition in its place, and then continue with the installation electing to use the NTFS file system for the installation.

Formatting will be done for you.

Good luck

Member Avatar for clasher097

thanks for your time i hope this works!!!

i already reformated the computer already with the win me disk should i do it over

whan in bios do u change the boot sequence under bios fetured setup
are all bios's the same?
do u chandge it to this? cdrom c,a

what r the other boot devices that u disable?

Member Avatar for Catweazle

No.

If the hard drive is empty you won't have a problem. When you get to the screen where you are asked if you wish to install Windows XP to the partition, follow instructions to remove the partition, and then follow the instructions to create a new partition in the unpartitioned space, using the NTFS file system.

(NTFS is much more efficient than the FAT32 file system used by Windows Me)

Member Avatar for clasher097

its saying it needs atapi cd-rom

Member Avatar for Catweazle

CD-ROM, C, A should be fine.

Are you getting the 'Press a key to boot from CD' message? If you don't press a key when the message shows, the routine is interrupted.

Member Avatar for i686-linux

What is saying it needs atapi cd-rom?

Member Avatar for Catweazle

heh heh.... I'm curious about that too. You ready to take over on this mate. It's way past bed-time where I am!

Member Avatar for clasher097

i also have 2 files in the c drive from wheni was figuring out how to get my drive to work what should i do

Member Avatar for clasher097

its saying boot from atapi cd rom

im also not getting that message:cry:

im just about ready to throw my computer out the window!!!:evil::mad:

Member Avatar for Catweazle

You gotta press a key when that happens. And you gotta have the Windows XP CD in the drive.

Member Avatar for clasher097

not the ME windows after i put in window xp and hit enter i didnt work it kept repeting the rame thing

Member Avatar for Catweazle

No, the XP one. I think you should go back, have a good read of the article I linked you to before, print it out and read it again.

Then sit back and start over, following the instructions in the article.

Member Avatar for clasher097

sorry i didnt get to read it

Member Avatar for clasher097

could i also while im in the bios under bios fetured setup use boot sequence c,cdrom
c,cdrom,a?

Member Avatar for Catweazle

In that case, any further instructions I give will only relate to installing Windows Me.

(I'm off to bed, by the way. G'night!)

Member Avatar for clasher097

thank for ur help

Member Avatar for i686-linux

the windows i have is shhhhh!! pirated someone gave it to me

That is most likely your problem. Who knows where that originally came from. I'm sorry but we can't help very much with pirated software here. If you can't afford a copy of Windows XP then reinstall whatever came with the computer when it was new. If you need help installing Windows that is fine, but we won't help with pirated software.

Member Avatar for clasher097

ok thanks for ur help

Member Avatar for clasher097

i put in win 98 and it still has that problem

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