New Hard Drive. What Am I Doing Wrong?

  • Thread starter Thread starter DigitalDon
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DigitalDon

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My mother-in-laws hard drive crapped out. This is an old computer (166 MHz speed). I just installed a new one (OK used off eBay), formated it for Windows 98SE and loaded my 98 start flopply with the CD driver file, etc. Works fine except I can't get the CD Drive to read. It sees the drive (as drive E) but gives an error when trying to read the CD. Not that it should matter but I tried the CD drive as a slave (with appropriate jumper) on the hard drive cable and as master on its own cable. I even popped in another CD drive just in case the old one crapped out. I know it's something really stupid because I did this same thing a couple of years ago. I just don't remember what the fix was.

I don't want to get another computer. She only uses it for playing games on internet.

DD
 
Why is the CD-ROM ending up as E? Do you have two harddrives or two CD's? If two CD's you are switching to the correct drive with the 98 CD in it? Inotherwords is E really the CD-ROM?

If you go into the BIOS and change the boot sequence so that CD-ROM is first, you should be able to boot directly of the win98 CD.

Might want to do a quick Format c: /q so it doesn't look at the boot files on the hard drive.

What is the error message?
 
Its possible you may have jarred the ribbon cable that connects the CD drive whilst you were digging around inside the PC. It will power up but wont spin or recognize a CD.
 
Checked the cables. Everythings OK.
The bootable floppy sets up a temporary D drive and sets up E as the CD drive. I tried setting BIOS to boot from CD, A, C in that order. It still looks for a floppy in the floppy drive.

The error it gives is: CDR101: Not ready reading drive E. Abort, Retry, Fail?

It gives this error whether or not I go to D or E drive and type SETUP or DIR or anything.

I know it's gonna be something really stupid :D

DD
 
Try this:

-Make a new boot disk

Go to a command prompt in windows, start, run, command <enter>
format a: /s/q <enter>

Copy format.com to the floppy (found in c:\windows\command)

Make a directory on the floppy called cdrom

Download this and extract to the cdrom directory on your 98 boot floppy:

http://www.sigmacomputers.on.ca/cdsetup.zip

Reboot with the floppy

Format c: /s/q

Change directory to cdrom

cd cdrom <enter>

cdsetup <enter>

Reboot without the floppy and see if your CD-ROM can be read.
 
Thanks Emeric, you saved the day. She's back online now playing games. Now if I can figure out why the floppy drive doesn't work anymore!!! Hey I'm happy :D :D

DD
 
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