Win 98SE won't let me use my CDRW

[huggybear]

I have a Gateway Solo 9300 with Windows 98 SE and recently purchased an Acer external USB CDRW drive.

When I first installed the drive it worked but only when I booted with it plugged in and turned on. Now, it won't work at all.

I've uninstalled it and reinstalled it a few times. The computer always recognizes a new device and goes through the motions of installing it but it never shows up in My Computer.

Can anyone help me figure out what is wrong?

Thanks, Bear

 

[bigdaddytim]

DOn't use PNP. Manually add the driver after you plug the CD in after booting up. PNP doens't work well with USB.

 

[huggybear]

Thanks.

I did wind up installing the driver by hand. Then the computer didn't like it so it went into skip driver mode. After I deacivated ASD it worked. But only when I boot with the burner hooked to the computer and turned on. Any time I try to hot plug it it crashes the computer.

Oh well, at least I can use it the old fashioned way.

Bear

 

[blubeast]

Something you might try is reinstalling the win98 USB drivers ..... this is something that gets overlooked as a lot of people assume that they are always there .... the program has been known to drop them for no reason that I can find.

 

[paulwood]

You may have already done it this way, but USB can require that the drivers are installed before the peripheral is plugged in for the first time. After it's (hopefully) installed, it will need to be plugged in and turned on at bootup unless it's hot-pluggable. USB should be, but drives need to access the OS at a fairly fundamental level, so it possibly may not be.

 

[Socrates101]

I got over this problem by installing the drivers, (prior to hardware) in the system folder. After that, I did add new hardware. When it came to the driver prompt, I simply pointed it to the drivers in the driver folder. After the successful install, I did a hot disconnect and then shutdown. When rebooting, I left the device disconnected.
After bootup was complete, I played half a Game of spider(just for fun) and then hot plugged the cdrw.
I had the unit setup for autorun, so it immediatly ran.
Just a quick note, as with all procedures I have done, sometimes I have had to do the same procedure seven or eight times to have the device run correctly.
The fact you have to do it again and again, doesnt mean you are doing it wrong.
Keep on pluggin!

 

[huggybear]

Thanks to you all! I would have responded to you sooner but I had a problem getting into this site.

Bear