[wowie]

Hi, I'm new here, so Thanks! for any and all help K, this will be a long explanation. I'm working on an EMachine S1940, AMD Athlon XP 1900+, that originally had Win Xp Home on it. My friends sister was in this computer, and (I think) deleted the wrong thing. Methinks this puter was having problems, maybe many, before I ever laid eyes on it. So, she gave it to me, to see if I could fix it. Now, I don't have the restore disks that came with, she can't find them, but I do have my own Win 98SE Full Edition. So, I'm trying to load in the 98, and I cannot get the computer to recognize the cdrom, so it will start the set up. (there is a cdr in here) I have wiped the hd, reformatted, even reset the mbr, but nothing works. (yes, I did do your step by step instructions on installing win98) Now my sister, "her geekness" has helped every step of the way, but even she is stumped! From everythng we have found online, in forums, and elsewhere, all we can figure out is that either the cdr is dying, and I need to get another one,(it does light up, and I can hear it turning) I may just need to clean it, or the Win 98se does not have the correct drivers for the more advanced hardware. I have also gone into the DOS, and reset the boot order, to start with the floppy first, then the cd rom, then the HD, but nothing has worked so far. I can get the puter to reformat, but when it comes time to load the windows, the message I keep getting, is that CDR101 device not ready. Now we did do our homework on this message, that's how I know that it may be a hardware issue. I have gone inside, checked all connections, removed the memory stick, and reseated it, even removed the battery, (by the way, I took the battery out for over an hour, and the puter still had the partition in that was there when i removed it, my sister said that was very strange) When I get the A prompt, if I type in a C prompt, it will show one, but when i type in setup, i either get the message that C is not a valid drive, then have tried D prompt, get the same message, have even gone thru every letter of the alphabet to try to find one that will work. Also there are times I get the message: Windows 98 cannot find set up files" Also, most of my messages tell me " bad command or file name" Anyone have any other ideas? My sister says we may have to do switches next, then she makes this "sound" in her throat, hehehehe I guess we are just looking for another brain here, to see somethng we may be missing. Thanks in advance for all of you're help, this is me looking at this computer now

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Howdy:

When you use the boot floppy to boot to DOS, di9d you set an active partition on the hdd and format it??

Also, when using the boot floppy, are you using the option to "Start WITH cd-rom support"??

Last suggestion, go to www.bootdisk.com and get the files for a WinME boot floppy.. Install that on a clean formatted floppy and try setting up with it.. The WinME bootfloppy has a significant more cd-rom drivers on it..

Murray

[Murray S.]

Howdy:

When you use the boot floppy to boot to DOS, di9d you set an active partition on the hdd and format it??

Also, when using the boot floppy, are you using the option to "Start WITH cd-rom support"??

Last suggestion, go to www.bootdisk.com and get the files for a WinME boot floppy.. Install that on a clean formatted floppy and try setting up with it.. The WinME bootfloppy has a significant more cd-rom drivers on it..

Murray

[wowie]

Hi! Thanks for the quick responce. Ah, been there, done all that, problem remains the same, even after doing all that, and my sister had gotten me the windows ME boot floppy, just for that reason. Any other suggestions?

[Murray S.]

Is the cd-rom hooked up correctly - jumpered and set as slave if on the same IDE connection as the hdd or master if on IDE2??

Murray

[wowie]

Hi Murray, I did check all connections, they are on so tightly I didn't want to pull any harder to make sure they were on correctly, lol As far as the other, I know that the cdr was not ever taken out, since my friend bought the puter. ( I know she would not have even opened the case, to look inside, she wouldn't even have known how, she would have called me to do something like that.) So, as far as I know, it's set the way it was at the factory, I don't really know about it being mastered or slaved, jumpered, or the IDE connection. (as I stated above, my sister is "her geekness" I just follow along, and pretend to know what I'm talking about, but I do learn a little along the way, lol) So, I think the answere to your question is, yes, everything is correctly hooked up, and set properly per the factory. Thanks so much Murray, for helping me!

[Murray S.]

Check with your sister to make sure she didn't unhook or re-jumper anything before she brought it to you..

and, they should be tight even if they have been removed and re-inserted a multitude of times..

Murray

Edited by Murray S., 24 April 2005 - 11:21 AM.

[wowie]

Hi Murray, k, there are too many sisters in this story, lol. My sister has never set eyes on this puter, she lives 2 hours away, everything we are doing, we are doing over the phone. (this is, of course, driving her nuts! lol) The other sister comes in as the previous owners sister, who is the one that screwed it up in the first place. Whew! Confusing, ain't it?! Murray, I know the back of the puter had never been taken off, because e-machines puts a piece of "tape" across the back of it, so that they will know if someone else has been inside there, I'm sure, for warranty sake. Well, that piece of "tape" was taken off for the first time, by me, on Firday night. The only thing my sister and I can come up with, is that maybe the cdr is going bad, although the computer is only 1 1/2 years old-you know e-machines, they use such wonderful components, or that the drivers on the Win 98se boot up floppy, just are not good enough for the newer puter/cdr. Any ideas about that? Thanks so Much Murray, you are being a really big help here, another mind/perspective. :

[Murray S.]

Okay.. so much for that..

Seeing as though you have taken the back off, have you tried replacing that cd-rom with a different one or tried that one in another system?? Would be a quick way to check the state of the drive itself !!

Also, even though you said you did this, when you use a boot floppy, it changes the cd-rom drive letter by one.. therefore, if it used to be d: it would now be e:..(until Windows is loaded).. If they happened to have had a couple drives/partitions on the c: drive, then the new cd-rom drive would be one drive letter higher again..

Murray

[wowie]

Hi Murray Yah, tried all that Murray. Have not tried to put it in another puter, and test it, I think that if I have to do that, and I do know that is a distinct possibility, I might as well get another one, and put that into the e-machine instead. I had another older e-machine system, that i was going to use as a backup, but gave that to my sister when i got this one. Didn't think I would need that other one, or the parts, much to my dismay now. So, the parts to that are 2 hours away. I thank you for all of your help. but it appears that I will have to get another cdrom or rw for this e-machine before I am going to be able to get this to load the win98. And, that will have to wait until payday, or at least until I can see if someone at work may have one they will part with. I also wanted to tell you, I repartioned and reformatted, for about the 10th time, just a little while ago, and if I get past the "bad command or file name" or "CDR101 Not Ready, Not Reading Drive" then I will get the message "Windows 98 set up files are not found" and I think that may be because the cdr isn't working. So I'm giving up for now, have to return to work tomorrow, and I need some ME time with what's left of my weekend. lol Thanks so much for all of your help. I really, really do appreciate it. I will check back later for any reply from you. Thanks, wowie

[wowie]

Hey Murray, I just found something on the e-machine site, I'm going to cut copy paste it in here, so you or anyone else that may need it, can read it too. (her geekness found this for me, hehehe, she says to let you know that somedays she is backwards compatible, hehehe)
://www.emachines.com/support/view_faq.html?faq=1004988072&topic=1


Q: Is there a CD-ROM driver for MS-DOS? top

A: Yes, it is already on the hard disk drive. It is not recommended to load this MS-DOS driver and use Microsoft® Windows® 98 at the same time. To enable the driver in MS-DOS mode, you can simply remove the "REM" statement in your Autoexec.bat and Config.sys using a DOS editor like "EDIT". The driver is located in C:\CDROM directory.


I also put the link to e-machines in here for others to read and a link my sister found at you're site, with step by step instructions on how to restore a busted e-machine with WinXP, seems very specific, and very different from the "usual" steps taken to restore any other system.

http://www.geekstogo...ine-t17953.html


So, anyway, no matter what we did, this e-machine wasn't going to recognize the cd/r, until I do what is says above. Do you know how I can do this without a program that may cost me, my sister says it's a script, to extract the file, there are two of them, that's what they say on the e-machine site. Can you help with this one Murray? Thanks so MUCH, wowie

you know, I just reread this post, and now I'm all confused , it says not to use this driver with the win98, so do I extract the files? Will I be enabling them if I do? Seems to me I wouldn't want to enable them, since they say not to use them with the win98???? What should I do Murray???