my pc does not recognize the cd - rom

[itnut]

Troubled Aptiva E56 owner. My PC seems to have lost its "connection" with the CD - ROM drive!! What do I have to do to make my PC recognize the CD - ROM drive??

 

[ninja440th]

you said its lost the cd rom was your system seeing it before??

in post does the bios see it ??

is there power to it ie does the light come on?

is it on your primary or secondary controller??

are the jumpers set right?

 

[PaulG4AWZ]

have you done anything? loaded s/w, h/w taken the lid off?
installed zip drive, parallel port, hard drive, printer
give us a clue pls

 

[topscribe]

I posted this response to a similar problem in another forum:

In DOS mode, run MEM /C to see if MSCDEX is displayed in the list of drivers. If it is not, your MSCDEX.EXE file may be corrupt, missing, or improperly syntaxed in either the CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Be sure the /D switch is identical for the low-level driver and MSCDEX.

If MSCDEX is listed in MEM, look to your hardware. Has the location of the connection been changed--that is, was it connected to an IDE connector and now to the sound card or vice versa? Be sure the ribbon (signal) cable is securely fastened and not reversed on the connector and the Molex connector is also securely fastened (does the power light come on during POST?). Also, the ribbon cable itself may be bad; try it with another cable.

Other suggestions: Go into CMOS and run "Auto Detect" for HDDs, if you haven't already. Enter "device=[path]\setver.exe" into CONFIG.SYS. Although DOS should not require it if you have later than 5.0, it has been known to make a difference for some reason. Also, if you have a "lastdrive=[x]" command there, be sure the specified letter is beyond that the CD-ROM is supposed to specify.

There is an outside chance the drive controller itself may have gone bad. If you have it plugged into a connector on the MB, change it to the sound card if it has an accomodation for it (or vice versa). If you hook it to the sound card, run a hardware search in Windows to install it through the SC drivers. You may have to go to the Creative web site to see if they have an driver installation file to enable it in DOS (or even Windows).

Hope you find some help in here. Good luck!

 

[HugoGuessit]

I always recommend testing an errant cdd by booting to dos with a win98 or higher boot disk, select the "boot with cd-rom support" option. At the dos prompt, go to the cdrom drive letter and pull a directory (dir). If the drive is seen in dos, then windows has a sw prob. If it doesn't, there is a hw issue. If it is hw, go through the different cable checks. make sure the drive is jumpered correctly.

 

[topscribe]

Good point, HugoGuessit (great Handle, by the way). If the drivers load successfully in real mode (DOS) but you can't run a dir command for that drive, hardware is likely the culprit. I have seen it, however, where DOS would not even detect the drive to load its drivers, yet Windows would not only detect it but also install it. In this case, of course, you still would not have access to it in real mode.

I have also seen it where DOS would load the low-level driver and run it just fine, but Windows would not install it. In this case, Windows likely does not have a suitable driver for the drive in its catalog.

In either case, it may be necessary to go onto the Net and find the the appropriate drivers.

 

[dwmatteson]

Another thing to consider, believe it or not, is a boot sector virus. Someone recently brought a PC to me because it wouldn't recognize the CD-ROM. First thing I tried was messing with the device manager, checking for and reinstalling the drivers, and cracking to case to make sure the connections were snug. (I couldn't really get a good sense of what BIOS was picking up because it's a Compaq and I still haven't figured out the ins-and-outs of their BIOS.) As a last ditch effort, I ran a virus scan and sure enough, a virus showed up (don't remember the name off hand). After restoring the boot sector, the CD-ROM came right back. Go figure.

Don