Your boot disk does not recognize the CD-RW drive and your correct, you don't want to format unless your CD drive is recognized.

I'd first try to restore the system from a register backup by going to START>RUN> and type  scanregw  in the box.

If that didn't cure the problem than I'd boot to a DOS prompt and type  scanreg /fix  at the C:\ prompt. Wait untill completed and reboot.

Than if that doesn't work, reboot to a DOS prompt and type scanreg /restore which will give you 4 choices from the registry backup.  Select the oldest one.

If you have too, go through all 4 backups and if that hasn't restored your system than I'd reinstall the old CD-ROM drive and than reinstall windows over the top of your windows OS.

The final solution would be re-format your drive and reinstall Windows and than you could reinstall your CD-RW drive.
 mike michel

 --- On Tue 07/01, Colin Martin-Howes wrote:
Dear All,
We need to format our C Drive as it has become unstable.  We have downloaded the boot disc from the web site but our problem is this.

We installed a CDRW many months ago now and when we tried to start the format we came up with an error message telling us that the system could not find the CD drive.  We don't want to try and format now incase we will not be able to reinstall windows.

We have formatted the computer before and had no problems but this was before we changed the CD ROM drive for the CDRW.




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