Windows 95 Not Recognizing CD-ROM Drive

[dblot]

I recently replaced my motherboard. The new one is a Soyo SY-6KL with an Intel LX chipset and a Celeron 333. Once I got the board working and the bios to recognize the existing hard drive and CD-ROM, I tried to boot to Windows 95. It recognized that there was new hardware and tried to install new drivers. Since I wasn't sure what exactly was being installed, I just kept cancelling for every new piece. I rebooted to Windows 3.1 to see how that was going to work and that was fine. CD was recognized and worked, sound card and mouse all worked fine.

I then went back to Windows 95 and let it install the new hardware it was recognizing, related to the hard drives and PCI bus. Once it had finished and the system had rebooted, I tried to use the CD-Rom and couldn't. When I checked under "My Computer" for it, it wasn't there. Looked under device manager-hard disk controller and saw that it listed as the device "standard dual PCI controller", with a separate primary and secondary PCI controller that both had question marks. Tried deleting them, but they just reinstalled on reboot with same problems.

I thought that maybe that wasn't the right driver to be using since this board had an LX chipset that this version of WIndows 95 was perhaps not recognizing. So I went to the Intel web site, downloaded the update file for Windows 95 for the LX chipset and installed that. System replaced the standard dual PCI driver with the Intel PCI busmaster ones and rebooted, but still no CD-Rom drive.

I've read that bus master drivers don't always recognize CD-Rom drives. And this CD-Rom drive is a couple of years old, but
perfectly good. I don't seem to be able to replace the drivers that Windows 95 is installing. If I delete them, I can't install anything else in their place and they just reinstall when I reboot.

How can I get Windows 95 to recognize the CD-Rom drive?

[goldboyd]

Dont know why that happens, but it seems to happen to about half the machines that I install 95/8 on. Try installing the dos version of the cdrom driver which will add to your config.sys and autoexec.bat and that should get your cdrom recognized by windows 9x.

[Jin Vitas]

check under system properties performance.. and it will tell you what is wrong with it.. possible a modified mbr.. which may be a virus.

[CMonster]

If there are now no yellow asterix (!) in the device manager, try remming out the CDROM drivers line in autoexec.bat and rebooting. some busmaster IDE drivers do not like to work with real mode DOS drivers loaded at boot time.

Your old 16 bit DOS drivers are still working that is why the CDROM works in Windows 3.1 (and probably in DOS mode too), so there is probably nothing to gain by reloading them. You can test this by shutting down your computer and restarting in DOS mode - the CDROM drivers will probably load.

Most likely you still need to load the correct drivers for the board because Win95 was released before these LX boards came out. There should have been a drivers disk or CDROM that came with your new motherboard - If you cannot install the drivers because your CDROM does not work you could use Win3.1 to make a folder containing the motherboard chipset drivers and copy them over from Win95.

Or get your CDROM to work in DOS mode and copy the driver to a folder (i.e. directory) on the hard drive, reboot Windows and install them from the folder. If the CDROM drivers do not load in DOS mode, remember that the contents of your X:\>windows\dosstart.bat should basically be the same as your X:\>autoexec.bat

Also if you boot and F8 into the menu and choose "Command Prompt Only" then you will probably have to do a "dosstart" command at the prompt to load the CDROM drivers.

[philipg]

cmonster is right my windows 98 did the same thing until I rem the autoexec.bat and config.sys files for the Cdrom Dos Drivers

[dblot]

Very helpful advice. Thanks to all.

I loaded the DOS drivers for the CD-Rom drive into the config.sys and autoexec.bat files for Windows 95 and now Windows 95 is at least recognizing the CD-Rom drive.

When I check under system properties - performance, all the drives show an error message that they are using MS-DOS compatibility mode file system and I still have yellow asteriks for both primary IDE controller and secondary IDE controller. Both report as being "disabled device."

I did download from Intel's website the .inf update utility for Windows 95 for the LX chipset and that seems to have installed properly. But there's somewhat confusing advice at Intel's website that you shouldn't use the intel bus mastering drivers if you are running running 95 OSR2. But when the .inf utility ran, it loaded the intel bus master drivers.

I plan to try to delete the intel bus master drivers and see if that clears up any of these error messages. Any other thoughts about how to proceed at this point?

[Jin Vitas]

go into the propeties of the ! marked.. controllers and see what it says.. (ie code numbers).. and also check to see if you have something listed under OTHER DEVICES with a ? mark.

[SterlingA]

I have had a lot of problems building systems without device conflicts like you listed. The best thing to do is to go into Device Manager and remove every device that has an asterisk on it, then shut down and restart Windows 95/8. Windows should find all of the devices again and install the correct drivers.

[dblot]

Jim--

In properties for the two controllers with the ! mark it gives a 010 error code. The explanation is that the device is not present , not working properly, oe does not have all the drivers installed.

Under other devices, there is a device listed with a ? mark: PCI Universal serial Bus.

Any particular action to take besides trying to delete these devices and reboot to reinstall?

[CMonster]

after you try removing those devices which are showing problems in the device manager, if they do not reinstall and clear up the problems, try this: near the bottom of the device manager tree find the catagory "system Resources" or some such thing, under it you should see a long list of your motheboard resources, find the device "PCI Bus" and remove it, then do a reboot - help Windows install any device it asks for drivers for..do not skip any. If it asks for a CDROM and you do not have CDROM access then browse to C:\windows\system and let it look there for the drivers - chances are that most of them are there. Other places to look are C:\windows and C:\window\system\IOsubsystems <- not sure if it is IOsub or IOsubsys, anyway just browse to it. Also, you probably did not install a driver for the USB, you really should do that first.

good luck

George

[MadMax]

What CMonster said. If that still doesn't get it, start at a prompt w/your cd drive active. Dump all the *.cab files from the x:\win9x dir on your cd to a dir on your hdd. Disconnect your cd from the controller and boot to safe mode. Remove the devices that were problems. Reboot to normal mode and when plug~n~pray finds the devices and asks you to insert your cd, type in the path to the dir on the hdd where you put the *.cab files. That should clear your controller prob. What OSR of Win95 do you have? Only the last has USB driver support. You can get the patch from MS (Anyone w/ the address?). Shut down, reconnect your cd, boot and run the installation for your cd. Reboot and check device manager. If the prob came back, try to use a generic (Mitsumi,BTC,etc.) cd driver in the config.sys instead of the driver that came w/ your cd.

Don't forget to dump all those cab files when you're done-teehee. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by MadMax (edited 05-27-99).]

[Jin Vitas]

remove the USB device.. DO NOT reboot... install bus master drivers.. then reboot.. and then install USB drivers.

[dblot]

Again, thanks for all the help. Here's what happened.

The OSR2 version I'm running apparently doesn't include support for USB devices. It's the earlier OSR2. So I think that's why I keep getting the error message for the USB device. I will try to find the driver on the Microsoft site and install it and then remove the USB device, reboot and hope it gets properly recognized.

The controller issue has worked itself out. As I said before, I had downloaded from the Intel site the .inf utility and installed that so that the operating system would recognize the LX chipset. But that apparently did not load Intel's bus master drivers. That's a separate download file which I did not download or install. And Intel explicitly advises at their site not to use it's bus mastering driver if you're running at least OSR2. So I got one thing right at least.

There is also an extemely useful troubleshooting guide at Intel's site for problems connected with either the .inf update utility or Intel's bus master driver. which had advice for my exact problem. Among other things, they it said to check the Windows Registry at a very obscure location for a very specific line in the registry that causes Windows to "bypass further attempts to load the protected mode drivers." Their advice was to delete that line and reboot the system to clear up the yellow ! points for the two IDE controllers.

SO...I deleted that registry line, rem'ed out the two lines for the CD-Rom drive in config.sys and autoexec.bat, crossed my fingers, rebooted the system and lo and behold, it worked. No error messages for the IDE controllers and the system regognized the CD-ROM without having to load the DOS device drivers.

If anyone wants the cite for the Intel troubleshooting guide or the registry line that needed to be deleted, I'll be happy to post them.

Nice to finally have a system with no error messages!! (except USB device)

[Jin Vitas]

You are so welcome.. because u replied and told us it is fixed.. and how it was fixed.. (even though I was on the right track)


Remind me to take Dblot off my BLACKList

[This message has been edited by Jin Vitas (edited 05-27-99).]

[CMonster]

Glad to hear it got worked out - ah yes, I know that registry line but didn't think of it - it comes up so seldom --something about "NO IDE" wasn't it?

Well...next the USB ..if you should need it try here (you might as well download it for later) http://www.windrivers.com/company/intel/index.htm

OSR2.5 has USB support, but you can install the patch for it in OSR2... And here is a word to the wise, if you ever decide to reinstall Windows over the top of itself, be sure to uninstall the USB driver first otherwise you will get an error message that will perplex you to no end.

I have used the Intel Busmaster drivers with OSR2.0 without any problems so I wonder what Intel's cautionary statement is all about? I thought the latest version from Intel was bound to be better than the old ones that came with Windows.?? Are you sure it didn't say you must have at least OSR2 or higher?

I checked the site and here is what it said: Should You Download the Intel BM-IDE driver for
Windows 95?
First identify which version of Windows you are using by running the Start/Settings/Control Panel/Systems applet. The upper right section of the "General" tab lists the version number. Use the following table to match the version number to the common version name:

Windows Version Common Name
4.00.950 Windows 95 Retail
4.00.950a Windows 95 OSR 1
4.00.950b Windows 95 OSR 2.0/2.1
4.00.950c Windows 95 OSR 2.5
4.10.1998 Windows 98 Retail


If you are using the Windows 95 retail or OSR-1 release, you should download and install the Intel BM-IDE driver for Windows 95.

If you are using the Windows 95 OSR 2, OSR 2.1, or OSR 2.5 releases, or Windows 98, you should not download the Intel BM-IDE driver, as these operating system versions already contain a BM-IDE driver from Microsoft.

So it's not that the driver won't work, but perhaps they think the Microsoft version will cause less problems - still I think the newer one might work better than the old in some cases.



[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 05-27-99).]

[Ygor]

Thank you dblot and all others! I think this is what my first problem was too! (making a hard copy of this whole thread for reference)

[dblot]

Jim--Wouldn't have even occurred to me not to report back the results. But I guess not everyone does.

CMonster--You're exactly right about the registry line that needed to be deleted.

I agree that one can read the Intel site to simply be saying you'd be better off using the bus mastering drivers that come with the operating system than the Intel ones. But it seemed odd to me that they would say it the way they did if they really were just taking a neutral stand about which bus mastering drivers to use. I'm interested to hear that you've usd Intel's drivers with OSR2 with no problems, but I think I'll wait awhle before I try loading either set of bus mastering drivers.

Thanks for the link to the site for the USB driver. I'll try to get that working this weekend.