From: Diane Kroeckel :Subject: [PCBUILD] CD Drive


> Dear Listers,
>
> All of a sudden, my 40x Memorex CD Drive won't work.  When I put a CD in,
> the light goes on and flashes for a long time.  When I click on it in My
> Computer, during or after it's done flashing I get an error message:"E:\
> is not accessible. The device is not ready."
>
> So I rebooted, but no luck. Then I removed the drive in devices and
> rebooted. It was found but still didn't work. I reloaded the driver from
> the disk, but still didn't work. I went on Memorex's web site and
> downloaded the driver, still didn't work.
>
> I have Win98, 64MB Ram, 10GB HD, AMD-K6/2-400 chip, IBM clone using Soyo
> motherboard.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Diane Kroeckel
>
Diane,

I had the same thing happen with a Memorex 36X drive.  It would not read any
cd's and the light would just stay on and would finally return the "drive
not ready message".  I cleaned it with an Alsop cd cleaning kit and have
been using it ever since.

Windows 98 doesn't need to have the Memorex driver loaded for Win 98 to run.
The CD Rom driver is needed to use the CD Rom in Dos.  Win 98 has it's own
32 bit protected mode driver and will revert to MS Dos compatibility mode if
a 16 bit driver is loaded. You will need to check "Device Manager" to see if
you have a yellow exclamation point next to your hard drive controllers.  If
you do then you are running in MS Dos compatibility mode.  You will need to
remove any references to your CD Rom Drive from your autoexec.bat and
Config.sys.  You will also need to edit your registry to cause Windows to
try and reinitialize the protected mode IDE drivers by removing the NOIDE
from the following registry key:

HOT_KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\SERVICES\VXD\IOS

If you do not want to edit your registry Win 98 has a utility on the Cd Rom
in the Tools\Mtsutil folder.  You will find a Noide.inf file, right click on
the file and select install and this should remove the NOIDE entry from the
registry key.  Reboot your computer and it should find your CD Rom and
install the protected mode drivers.

Mary Wolden

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