OH GOOD LORD what did I do to WinME? Please help, ASAP!

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showoff0450

Member
Mar 30, 2001
166
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Okay, I just got a Lite-On 24x/10/40 CD-RW today in the mail from newegg. I put the drive in my system, made sure the Lite-On was set to "slave", and connected it to the same IDE connector as my DVD drive.

When starting up, the BIOS information correctly displays the DVD drive as secondary master and the CDRW drive as secondary slave.

BUT... in Windows ME, these two drives are not recognized at all! They're nonexistant in "my computer". What in the world is going on? I am positive I installed correctly, after all, my bios shows that I did.

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AND GUESS WHAT ELSE? Check out this screenshot I took! System Properties

Also, I have TONS of .idx files in "My Documents" - wth?!

How the heck do I fix this? All I wanted was my nice little burner to start churning out CDs, and now my system looks like it's mangled :( Please help!

-Thanks, Chris
 
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vedin

Senior member
Mar 18, 2001
298
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Well, have you taken the drive out? Although I've never had it, it could be the infamouse WinME not liking new hardware problem. No idea how to fix though....sometimes Windows is fusy.
 
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Bozo Galora

Diamond Member
Oct 28, 1999
7,271
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Mail Folder Architecture OutLook Express Mail uses a standard database technique. Each "folder" actually consists of two files. The *.MBX file is the main data store. All your messages are in there, along with other information, encoded in binary characters. The other file is an *.IDX file, which is an index to the *.MBX file. OE reads the *.IDX files to learn how to display the stuff in the MBX file. The IDX files are not humanly readable. When a message is deleted, only the Index file is changed to remove pointers to the message in the MBX file. So it effectively becomes invisible to the mail program. But in order to save time the main data file isn't rewritten each time. If you have a big file, that would get old fast. So the data that's been marked as "deleted" in the index actually is still in the MBX file. Compacting a folder takes the final step. It rewrites the .MBX file so that it matches the Index. In the process, all the obsolete data gets thrown away, and your MBX files shrink. Until Mail automatically compacts your folders, you can even "undelete" items by removing the matching IDX file. When it gets rebuilt, all the previously deleted messages will reappear. For more information, read Retrieving Deleted Messages. Though many users worry that OE is incapable of storing large message files, the size limit of the *.mbx and *.idx files is 4 gB. As a result, you likely will not build too large of a mail folder.

No IDE
 
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edjam

Golden Member
May 3, 2001
1,196
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I had a similar problem. Are using any Ultra ATA storage drivers from Intel or anything? Becaus I know when I used those I didnt have any IDE devices listed in My Computer, despite the PC still booting up rather oddly. So perhaps try uninstalling those?
 
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Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
3,012
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Sounds like a jumper problem, ensure that cable select is not selected and set slave / master on each drive and its connected to the right part of thr cable.
 
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NateSLC

Senior member
Feb 28, 2001
943
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As far as the IDX files in My Documents... Did you install NERO? Also, did you specify the audio database (for track info) as My Documents? Mine created tons of idx files with file names like CA00.IDX, CA0A.IDX, etc. If so, delete them and then make a new folder specifically for Nero's database.
 
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RSI

Diamond Member
May 22, 2000
7,281
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Those files in My Documents sound rather suspicious. Why the hell would Outlook (Express or not) put files in your "My Documents" folder? I have never seen this, and I've used OE 5, 6, Outlook 97, 2000. Although I don't PREFERRABLY use it and I don't usually - I have used them all and used them all for a good enough amount of time to know that it's not normal! Unless it's a new "feature" in WinXP!

Do what everyone said here, there are some good suggestions. Check if your IDE cables are good. Use only one device (use the last good configuration). If everything works fine with those IDE cables, then you can eliminate that suspicion. Next, you could try swapping the drives on different parts of the cable, or putting them on different cables. There should be no reason to do this, as the BIOS detected everything correctly, but it's worth a try. By the sounds of it, it simply sounds as if WinME was too retarded to properly detect/install your new hardware. Which is pretty sad considering it's just a good ol' burner.

Since Windows is using the compatibility mode drivers, that indicates one of two things :

1) You have a virus (and the Outlook files supports this suspicion)
2) Your existing drivers are fine, but will not work with your new hardware, and for some reason crippled it all.

So I would say, simply remove the burner and see if everything goes back to normal. If it does, it will be safe to assume that WinME can not use your burner with your current IDE drivers, and you will have to uninstall them. What you could do is boot up in safe mode (or normally if you feel like it), and remove any IDE drivers you may have. If you have removed the Lite-On at this point, put it back in and boot up and see if WinME detects things properly this way. If you still have the Lite-On installed, simply reboot after removing your drivers and see if it detects them properly that time around.

It's too early in the morning to think of many more good ideas, so I will leave you with that. Good luck to you.

-RSI
 
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showoff0450

Member
Mar 30, 2001
166
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0
I think my IDE drivers are severely screwed up... because now if I take the CDRW totally out, the DVD by itself doesn't even show up in windows - at least it did that before, not it doesn't even do that.

If I go into safe mode and wanted to delete the IDE drivers... would WinME restore them when I restarted normally? (Then I can try to start all over again with the burner)... if so, how can I do this?

Thanks,
-Chris
 
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