CD-RW not recognized by Win98. _Please_ help!

[cpebbles]

I just installed a Plextor 8/4/32 IDE burner in my system. It worked right after installation, but I was having some problems with power, so I had to move some stuff around. When I rebooted, the burner was gone. I re-tightened everything and Win98 recognized it as (CD-Rom drive) in Device Manager, but it wasn't showing up as a useable drive. It had tried to assign both the burner and my DVD-ROM D:, so I switched drive letters, and nothing. I've tried every combination of primary/secondary IDE master/slave settings for the two drives (HDD is on ATA/66, so all 4 spots are free), and nothing has helped.

Here's my setup:

Abit BP-6 with dual 366s at 458 (I think). SB Live! value (I've disabled DOS emulation). Voodoo3 2000 AGP. Linksys LNE-100TX NIC. Printer plugged into LPT1, DexDrive (PlayStation thing) on serial port 1. IBM Deskstar hard drive, Sony floppy. That's it except for the CD drives. I've kept up on every available update for Windows and the hardware drivers.

I was running the chips at 366 MHz when I installed the drive (I couldn't put up with the wait after every reboot), so that's not the problem.

PLEASE, can anyone suggest anything to help me get this thing working? Any idea why Win98 is seeing my burner (It's even enabled DMA and got the correct firmware revision listed on Properties), but won't use it? I've posted this all over and contacted Plextor, and no one's been able to help yet.

cpebbles

 

[AndyHui]

Are you saying that Win98 recognises the Plextor as a CDROM, and can read CDs from it, but won't burn?

Not trying to make you sound silly, but did you install burner software? Win98 does not support straight burning natively in the OS.

I mean, you installed Adaptec EZ CD Creator or Nero or something like that?

 

[DaddyG]

Search your registry for 'NOIDE' and remove. Also boot in safe mode and look for the dreaded yellow !!

 

[cpebbles]

It's showing up as (CD-Rom drive) in Device Manager, but not in Windows Explorer or the DOS Prompt. Windows seems to recognize it (As a CD-ROM at least), but won't let me access it. I've got Plextor's Adaptec software currently on the system.

Also, wasn't able to find NOIDE anywhere in my registry (My DVD-ROM, which is working, is also IDE), and Safe Mode didn't show any exclamation marks, though it showed both drives 3 times. When I went back to normal, they were down to 1 of each.

Thanks, more ideas please.

cpebbles

 

[techhelper]

Try to uninstall(remove) the CDRW and all its software and try again.

Also place the DVD and the CDRW on the same IDE channel and see if that works.

Good Luck

 

[cpebbles]

I've removed the software (It occurred to me that the only time the drive was functional was before I installed the software bundle), but nothing happened. I've also removed the drive a few times since, and tried both on primary IDE, both on secondary, and everything else.

Is it possible the drive is somehow damaged? If that's the case, why would Windows be recognizing the firmware revision, etc.?

cpebbles

 

[ramuno]

Double check the CMOS Bios setup and the Master/Slave jumpers. I recently ran into the problem of a drive showing up in device manager but not in explorer. A simple oversight of a jumper change was the culprit.

 

[cpebbles]

Interesting. I've decided to reinstall Windows to see if that helps, and when I loaded on a boot disk, it recognized both drives! I'm going to go ahead and delete everything, see what happens.

cpebbles

 

[cpebbles]

Aw yeah. Clean hard drive, fresh Windows install, recognized Plextor. Thanks for the suggestions, folks. I probably would have just shipped the thing back in disgust without the friendly net-folks prodding me along.

cpebbles