win98 can't "see" the CD

[brianmgb]

Hello experts,

Prior to doing an udate I formatted the Harddisk inserted my win98se CD and started the reinstall,all went well until the install process had to be booted from the HD,the files required to complete the install couldn't be installed because Win98 CD couldn't access the CD.In the event that this was a bad CD i tried again with my reserve CD with exactly the same result,I then tried with win98 (none se) same again.After this I installed Mandrake linux without any problems.This is then a problem peculiar to windows.Since the install CD was initially accessed DOS ? drivers the question is how does win "discover" plug and plays differently to LINUX??

Is there any other solution to this peculiarity???

[Sfor]

The Windows 98 boot cd does incluge a bootable DOS FDD image it boots from. Unluckily the CD-ROM drivers present on the image do not support all available CD drives. In some cases vendor specific DOS driver is necesary.

So, there is no "discover" system in the Windows boot CD, as the Linux has. As a matter of fact there is no plug and play support, as well.

Edited April 21, 2008 by Sfor

[thydreamwalker]

A bootable 98SE floppy/and ;or usb flash ,or zip disk with drivers in question always is bios-ly correct<if installed.*Or create small safety net on another hdd with drivers necessary for Cd-rom to access when installing 98SE.....thydreamwalker B)

[brianmgb]

Thanks for your reply,the annoying thing here is that I have previously installed win98se on this PC more than once without problems so why it should suddenly "misbehave " is a big mystery,the CD recorder is a reputable pioneer dvd 106d with uptodate firmware,but not recently updated so that can be discounted as a source of problems.

I am going to put the HD in another PC reinstalll win98se and then return the HD to its own PC and complete the install from there.

[dandnsmith]

In that case (I had it happen to me), copy the CD content to a folder on the formatted (but otherwise clean) HDD, boot from a floppy and run the setup from the folder - has the advantage that all the refs are to that folder in the case of needing other protocols or OS bits added.

If the CD is working (ie accessible) from the PC you're interested in, you can do it all without changing the HDD over.

Edited April 24, 2008 by dandnsmith

[brianmgb]

Hi all,I have tried a clean install on another PC and the installed win98 found the CD player there,after that I put the HD back in it's original PC but still no CD player found.

I am now doing what as dandnsmith suggested I will report later how it went.

[brianmgb]

Here i am again,good news the install was no problem but I still don't see a CD on the device manager,I will physically remove and reinstall this device later today and hopefully it will appear.A second problem is a resource conflict between the NIC and the hard disk controller overlapping locations,how can I check which locations are free to manually reassign the NIC resources if necessary???.,here I will first remove the NIC and then reinstall.

thanks

[erpdude8]

it could be a problem with the CD drive itself. does the BIOS detect the CD drive? can the Win98 boot disk see the CD drive? load a Win98 boot disk and select the CD-ROM option to see if your CD drive can be seen.

You might want to check out this CNET.com forum thread about Win98 not seeing the CD drive:

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7813_102-0.htm...messageID=78598

[dandnsmith]

A second problem is a resource conflict between the NIC and the hard disk controller overlapping locations,how can I check which locations are free to manually reassign the NIC resources if necessary???.,here I will first remove the NIC and then reinstall.

thanks

Brian - get to device manager, then right-button on the computer icon and select Properties.

You will then be able to see what each device is using in the way of resources.

[Ponch]

You might try to reset the PCI configuration in Bios.