CD Rom drives aren't being recognized

[cshajkur]

My CD Rom drives aren't being recognized by windows. There also shown in the device manager as well in the Bios boot menu as being OK. However each gives an error that says the drives are not accessible and the device is not ready.

The drives are new so I don't believe its a hardware failure. I also checked windows OS and the system file checker and both are OK. indicates that all of the files are present. I unable to reinstall windows even if I wanted to. What else can I do to find and correct this problem?

 

[ski]

Did both drives ever work ok, or did problem start immediately after installing one of the drives?

Which O/S are you using?

 

[cshajkur]

No both drives stopped at the same time and both had worked fine previously. My OS is Win 98 SE.

 

[ski]

-See if both drive work on another system.

-If they both work there, then shut down the system, disconnect both drives, restart in Safe mode, remove all optical drives from Device Manager, shut down the system(do no restart at the prompt), reconnect only one of the drives, restart normally, and let Windows recognize the drive and reinstall its drivers.
If it now works, then do the same with the other drive.
(Make sure they are properly jumpered and connected to the correct cable connectors as Master and Slave).

-If that does not work, then make sure the secondary(IDE 2) controller is enabled in BIOS, and that there are also no problems with it in Dev. Mgr.

-If those are ok, then jumper one of the drives as Slave, and connect it to the primary(IDE 1) channel. If it now works, then the secondary channel or the secondary IDE cable may be bad.
Reconnect it to the secondary IDE channel with a known working IDE cable(make sure the cable is correctly connected with the red or blue or gray stripe along the one edge located next to the power lead at the back of the drive, and next to pin 1 at the MB connector). If it works, then the original IDE cable is bad.
If it does not work, then the secondary IDE channel or the power lead may be bad. Connect a different power lead to the drive. If it works, then the orig. power lead is bad. If it does not work, then the sec. controller is bad.