[gasboy]

I bought a used IBM 385XD laptop. It's a PII, 233, 96 megs ram, 2 gig hardrive. Everything worked fine until I went to Microsft's update page and did all of the updates as the previous owner never did any. Now the cd-rom drive doesen't work. When any cd is installed it says there is no cd in drive E. It came with an Adaptec cdrw. I removed it thru add/remove programs and installed a generic cd driver as I'm going to use the restore cd to get it back to original specs. Also the 'diskette' program won't work either. I need to get the cd-rom to work so I can restore the system but I'm afraid to because the cd-rom drive isn't working. Does anybody know what I did to mess the thing up as everything was fine until I did the updates. Thank You

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let's try to uninstall the cd drive using device manager. then restart the computer
and retest after it is automatically reinstalled.

remove and reinstall using device manager:
start>settings>control panel>system>device manager>+ next to cdrom
please post whether red or yellow indicators are present(BEFORE = red, yellow, or none)
select the device, remove, ok
restart the pc, then look for red or yellow indicators for the cdrom using device manager.
please post whether red or yellow indicators are present(AFTER = red, yellow, or none)
test the cdrom if no yellow or red flags are present.

[bdlt]

let's try to uninstall the cd drive using device manager. then restart the computer
and retest after it is automatically reinstalled.

remove and reinstall using device manager:
start>settings>control panel>system>device manager>+ next to cdrom
please post whether red or yellow indicators are present(BEFORE = red, yellow, or none)
select the device, remove, ok
restart the pc, then look for red or yellow indicators for the cdrom using device manager.
please post whether red or yellow indicators are present(AFTER = red, yellow, or none)
test the cdrom if no yellow or red flags are present.

[gasboy]

I appreciate the help. I have tried removing the cd and it still doesen't work. There are no yellow or red marks present either before or after. The cd motor runs and the device manager says it'd working properly, but when I put a cd in and try to start it I get 'there is no disk in drive e'.Thanks again for the help.

[bdlt]

Also the 'diskette' program won't work either

are you referring to the win98 startup disk? if so, did you try selecting "with cdrom support"? and what happened then?

[gasboy]

Yes I tried the startup disk too. The same thing happens; the cd motor starts spinning but yet it still says there is no disc in drive E.

[bdlt]

it looks like it could be one of the following:

1. this cdrom does not run with a generic driver
2. the cdrom died
3. every cd you tried is bad(very unlikely)

things to try:
go online and try to find a 'real' driver for this cdrom
test the cdrom in another pc

[bdlt]

OR back out the microsoft updates

[gasboy]

I stand corrected on my last post. When I put in the win98 startup disk I get two errors: It says there is an error or missing file in the "oakcdrom.sys". Also, it says there is an error in the config.sys in line 10. After that the A: drive no longer reads the disk. don't know what the Oakcdrom is. In the device manager it says I have a Sanyoo crd-s372 0 0 0 cd. It may be the generic driver I loaded trying to get it to work. As for the error in line 10 in the config.sys, that is a bit more complicated for my limited knowledge. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[gerryf]

try installing the following

http://www.adaptec.c...1a2.exe&sess=no

[bdlt]

let's delete the cdrom driver(again) using device manager.
please restart the pc after deleting the driver. then look in device manager and post any cd devices listed. post any 'found new hardware' messages during startup.

once the driver is gone, you can boot with the startup disk and we can see if it finds the cdrom. if it does find it, then install a cd(a known good one) a type dir to see if it recognizes the cd.

[gasboy]

I loaded the driver you suggested with no results. I then deleted the cd rom in the device manager and rebooted. No 'new hardware' appeared and when I went back into the device manager the cd-rom was back in there. Upon bootup it says the following:IDE/ATAPI CD_ROM device driver version 2.10, 12/13/95. CD-ROM drive #0 found on 1foh port slave device, v 1.24. When I used the win 98 startup disk the following appears: It loads oti-91x ATAPI cd-rom device driver, Rev d91xv352 device name- MSCS001. No drives found, aborting installation. When startup disk finishes it says diagnostic tools successfully loaded in drive E. Device driver not found:"MSDC001". No valid CDROM device drivers selected. When I type in E: and type DIR it says: E DIR volume in E is ms-ramdrive. Directory: attrib exe,chkdsk exe, command com, debug exe, edit com, ext exe, extract exe, format com, help bat, mscdex exe, readme txt, restart com scandisk exe, scandisk ini,sys com. I appreciate your help in this matter. Any suggestions?

[bdlt]

It looks like the driver loaded properly. It also looks like the floppy boot disk does not have a suitable generic driver for the cdrom(not a serious problem).

If you installed the driver as suggested by gerryf in a previous post, then it looks like the windows updates are causing the problem.

I'm not familiar with uninstalling windows updates. It sounds like you installed many updates at once. If you can describe which updates were installed, perhaps one of the 'update' experts out there could help in removing the culprit.

If the driver suggested by gerryf has not been installed, then install it before removing anything from your pc.

[gasboy]

I tried to load that driver but it must have missing some files as it wouldn't install. I went to the add/remove programs and uninstalled the win 98 updates and still the same thing.

[bdlt]

Based on what we've seen there seems to be 2 possible causes:
1. the driver
2. the cdrom(not likely, but possible)

Let's look at the driver. What error messages were displayed(i.e. missing file names) when the gerryf driver was unsuccessful during installation?

reminder - remove the old driver before trying to install a new one

What is the name of the gerryf driver?

[gasboy]

I finally did get Gerry's driver to install.It still doesen't make any difference. Since I have the orginal restore cd, I'd like to reformat and reload the original software but if the cd doesen't work, all I'll have is a reformatted harddrive. This is driving me nuts.