Win98se doesn't "see" CD drives

[Basilisk]

[I feel like the whale in HGttG: "Not again!!" ]

I just replaced my m/b [AK35->MSI-k7n2] and Win98se has now lost track of the two IDE CD drives. POST notes their existence, but Windows doesn't create drive letters for them.

Anyone know how to beat Win98se into submission? How to get it to "see" these drives? I couldn't divine this from an hour searching M$'s warehouse of technical notes, nor from a search of forum entries here.

Over the years, I've seen its OS's lose track of CD drives a number of times. Alas, the only fix I've known to work has been to reload Windows. Given all the Win upgrades I've applied, this isn't an appealing approach.

Were it not for M$'s current licensing restrictions (discouraging frequent h/w changes) I'd just upgrade to XP. (Part of me also hates to pay them a bundle ro buy a work-around for their product's defect.) While I hate to exculpate M$, I will note that having Alcohol [CD s/w] on my system may have contributed to the problem -- but Win98se should have a simple method to re-setting its drive info.

Any Answer would be appreciated !!

 

[bacillus]

any error messages or exclaimation marks in device manager?

 

[Basilisk]

Originally posted by: bacillus
any error messages or exclaimation marks in device manager?

Not a hint of an error: just no reference to any CD drive. Yet, POST shows both drives out there on their own cable (IDE2, master and slave).

 

[bacillus]

a couple of things spring to mind!
a virus can do this so can you confirm that your system has been scanned with an uptodate antivirus definitions.
this could be the noIde bug causing this:
Click Start, then Run... , and type regedit
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\IOS
if you see a value named "NoIDE". Delete it, close regedit and reboot!

let us know how you get on

 

[Shawn]

if you need them asap you can always load the dos drivers until you get the windows drivers fixed.

 

[Basilisk]

Originally posted by: bacillus
a couple of things spring to mind! a virus can do this so can you confirm that your system has been scanned with an uptodate antivirus definitions. this could be the noIde bug causing this: Click Start, then Run... , and type regedit Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\IOS if you see a value named "NoIDE". Delete it, close regedit and reboot! let us know how you get on

Virus? Well... I hadn't seen any problems before replacing the m/b. I was able to use the single CD for a day after replacing the m/b, tho' I'd "lost" one of the two CD's; then I uninstalled the Alcohol [cd] package (which installs the SCSI driver AXWHISKY !!) on the chance that would make both drives available -- and I lost the second CD !! Well, I'd scan for viruses, but my A/V versions are pretty old as I don't download much -- although I was downloading up-to-date drivers for the new board....

Registry? Wish I understood this beast as well as you: I can never recall where I patched old problems !! In this case, I checked your entry (...\VxD\IOS) and only found
Start 00
Static VxD "IOS"
There were no instances of "nolde" [or "noide" ] anywhere in the registry.

Hmmm... when the boys are off my other Win98 box, 'guess I'll stare at its Registry and see if I can find where the CD's are configured. [Fat chance I'll find anything!]

Thanks for the suggestions....

 

[bacillus]

which m/board are you using?
did you install the m/board drivers?
only other suggestion I can offer is to boot up with a good win98 startup floppy & at the A: prompt type fdisk /mbr then hit enter. remove the floppy & reboot.
btw don't worry if you didn't find the NoIde registry entry as it shouldn't be there in the first place.

 

[redbeard1]

It sounds like you don't have the new updated ide controller driver installed. With this problem you'd see the hard drive but not the cdroms on the secondary controller.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

I wonder how long it will take people to learn this is an easy fix. (this problem has existed since the beta copy of windows95 and was finally fixed when microsoft dropped the 9x core and went to the NT core for thier desktop OS's)

open regedit.
do a search for "noide" without the quotation marks of course.
change the 1 in the data field to a 0 or simply delete the registry key (deleting the key is a more permanant fix)

it won't harm your registry, its simply a matter of windows had a glitch while accessing an ide device and defaulted itself to using 16-bit pio2 mode of opperation (and disables atapi access at the same time)

edit: reloading windows is soooo an extreme measure for this stupidly simple problem.

 

[Basilisk]

Originally posted by: redbeard1
It sounds like you don't have the new updated ide controller driver installed. With this problem you'd see the hard drive but not the cdroms on the secondary controller.

As I've reloaded the NForce drivers -- 2 or 3 times from latest MSI version, and just now, again, from the distribution CD [over LAN from another computer] -- I've done about as much loading of those drivers as possible !!

That's not to say you aren't "right", as M$ sometimes doesn't overwrite files (I believe). If I knew of target files to delete, I'd do that and then do another reload.

 

[Basilisk]

Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
I wonder how long it will take people to learn this is an easy fix. (this problem has existed since the beta copy of windows95 and was finally fixed when microsoft dropped the 9x core and went to the NT core for thier desktop OS's) open regedit. do a search for "noide" without the quotation marks of course. change the 1 in the data field to a 0 or simply delete the registry key (deleting the key is a more permanant fix) it won't harm your registry, its simply a matter of windows had a glitch while accessing an ide device and defaulted itself to using 16-bit pio2 mode of opperation (and disables atapi access at the same time) edit: reloading windows is soooo an extreme measure for this stupidly simple problem.

bacillus beat you to this suggestion, and I replied there was no such "noide" entry in the Registry.

I'd certainly like a simple solution like you've suggested, but it'll have to be another one !!

 

[jfunk]

There is a lot of stuff that needs to redetect when you replace a mobo and don't do a fresh install (ie, everything).

You're going to need to clean out all your old hardware from the registry and let it redetect to get everything working. Even completely different chipsets don't usually redetect all the mobo resources in Win98 properly until you've removed all the old stuff.


-j

 

[Basilisk]

Originally posted by: bacillus
which m/board are you using? did you install the m/board drivers? only other suggestion I can offer is to boot up with a good win98 startup floppy & at the A: prompt type fdisk /mbr then hit enter. remove the floppy & reboot. btw don't worry if you didn't find the NoIde registry entry as it shouldn't be there in the first place.

System: MSI K7N2-delta ILSR + xp2500 + Radeon 8500 + 2x256MB DDR2700 + 2xMaxtor 120GB + ATI TV pci + Audigy + ata CD/RW + ata DVD

I installed all the MSI disks drivers initially; then I reloaded with latest version downloads from the MSI site. That said:
- the RAID (Promise fast track) drivers don't seem to load properl: I finally disabled them
- the FireWire bus didn't seem to load correctly: I initially disabled it, and later forced a driver reload
- about half the time the system locks up in shutdown: 'thought I'd isolated cause to the FireWire or RAID drivers and "fixed" the shutdown issue by disabling these; but it later resumed so I have to explore further.

All told, I've loaded the three driver sets (Base set, RAID, NForce USB 2.0) three to six times (depending on which set).


I've read up on fdisk /mbr and don't see how that can impact the CD recognition: it appears to just re-insert boot location. Please advise! (I may just do it on faith, as I don't see any harm that can result. )

 

[Basilisk]

Originally posted by: jfunk
There is a lot of stuff that needs to redetect when you replace a mobo and don't do a fresh install (ie, everything). You're going to need to clean out all your old hardware from the registry and let it redetect to get everything working. Even completely different chipsets don't usually redetect all the mobo resources in Win98 properly until you've removed all the old stuff. -j

I wish I could find something to act upon, here, but I don't know of any entries to clean out, nor any way to identify them.

I did look through the Registry and verify there weren't any CD details where healthy systems have them (I've forgotten the fields, but they're at end of Registry).

And... the problem is that POST shows the drives while the OS doesn't... so what I need is the Trigger to get Win98se to reconsider its CD's. I've seen this happen half a dozen times over the past decade, unfortunately.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

did you do the search for it or just look up that one location on the tree, I've seen it in 5 different locations before within the registry.

you might also check msconfig to see if there is anything disabled that shouldn't be.

 

[bacillus]

I've read up on fdisk /mbr and don't see how that can impact the CD recognition: it appears to just re-insert boot location. Please advise! (I may just do it on faith, as I don't see any harm that can result.

The Master Boot Record may not be really bad but if Win doesn't like it then your stuck and no CD-rom support.

 

[ajskydiver]

You can delete all your hardware info from the registry and Win98 will redetect everything upon the next bootup - so you need to have the drivers for everything available before you erase the setting.

In the registry, local computer ----> Hardware ----> Enum (delete enum folder entirely).

I may be a little off on the exact wording since it's been years since I've done this...but it works beautifully IF you have all the drivers you need!

~AJ

 

[Basilisk]

Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
did you do the search for it or just look up that one location on the tree, I've seen it in 5 different locations before within the registry. you might also check msconfig to see if there is anything disabled that shouldn't be.

I scanned the entire Registry.

'Haven't a clue what would disable CD's in the MSCONFIG area, but I haven't noted anything odd there. All suggestions would be appreciated!

 

[Basilisk]

Originally posted by: Aj_UF
You can delete all your hardware info from the registry and Win98 will redetect everything upon the next bootup - so you need to have the drivers for everything available before you erase the setting. In the registry, local computer ----> Hardware ----> Enum (delete enum folder entirely). I may be a little off on the exact wording since it's been years since I've done this...but it works beautifully IF you have all the drivers you need! ~AJ

Yoicks... well... why not? If I've the cojones, I'll try this tonight. (Amidst my other tests, I've slightly maimed the system at the moment and have to figure out what I've clobbered!!! )

 

[Basilisk]

YOICKS indeed !!!

fdisk /mbr didn't appear to alter the situation, BUT renaming (as good as deleting!) the ENUM entry in the Registry seems to have recovered my CD's.

T H A N K S ! ! !

Of course, it takes quite awhile to get everything loaded, and the Radeon 8500 driver is a bit queered at the moment, but that's easy to fix given a few spare minutes... which I'll have tomorrow.

So, thanks all. This seems The Way To Go when the CD's dematerialize. Wish I'd known about this YEARS ago. WHEEEEEEE !!! I'll make a final, more detailed note on things tomorrow when I have more time (and when screen is better than 800x600 ! )

 

[Basilisk]

Smoothly running now: ALL problems from a couple of misloading drivers to reboot-lockup are gone . And the key to this: renaming/deleting
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum

After the rebuild, there were only 15 key-trees under Enum as opposed to the 23 before.

Of course, it required 6-10 reboots (one loses track) while re-installing all the devices. And then it required another half-dozen fix-ups and reboots to resolve further Micro$oft moments -- drivers it rebuilt oddly (like creating multiple Radeon, keyboard and DMA drivers).

BUT... this was a great technique to learn. Thanks again for all the help !!!

 

[ajskydiver]

Good to hear!

Imagine doing that and NOT having all the drivers you need...did that ONCE - it wasn't pretty...never made that mistake again.

~AJ