Caddie type CDROM keeps ejecting from drive

I have an external CD ROM, and it did the same thing. A dirty lens is a possibility, but in most cases it would not eject the CD, just not run it.

Usually, it is CD placement. If the ROM cannot spin the CD properly, then it will eject so nothing gets hurt.

If your CD ROM is on it's side, turn it upwards. Try to level it out as best as possible.

Another thing that can cause ejection is vibration. If you have the CD ROM on top of the computer, then take if off there, and set it on the table. You can even get some packing foam, and set the CDROM on that. If the computer is vibrating for some reason (power supply, internal drive), then the CD ROM may have problems spinning, and then eject the disk for safety sake. Also, if there is anything on top of the CD ROM, then take that off. a Zip drive can vibrate bad.

Give this a try and let me know what happens.  

If your external drive is an ide device (connected to the printer port) you may be able to replace the drive inside your external case with a new drive, this will probably fix your problem. To determine if this is possible open up the external case and look at the drive that is inside it, I would recommend removing it and taking it by a local PC shop and have them sell you a compatible replacement. Get a slower speed ie 24X if popssible I have had trouble with the 36X and 40X ones in external cases.

It's a SCSI drive as evidenced by his question.

I mentioned that this is a scsi drive not and IDE. I should also indicate that I would like to if I have to put in an IDE drive. There is a 5 and 1/4 drive on the system. Can I take it out and replace it with the new CDROM DRive?

Most modern motherboards have two IDE channels,
and each IDE channel can support one or two IDE devices.
So, if you have room inside your computer,
you should be able to add an internal IDE-style CD-ROM,
either as a "slave" device on the primary IDE channel,
or as a "master" device on the secondary IDE channel.

I have just been trying to add this new EIDE Cdrom to no avail. I would note that i have it set up as slave because I thought the harddrive needed to be the master and was probably setup that way. I do have an extra connector in the middle of the ide cable that I hooked up to the cdrom. Should I change the setting on the cdrom to master? Is it possible on this 1993 Acer 486 that it can not accept another device? I should also note that under hard disk controllers in device manager it indicates that under standard ide/esdi hard disk controller that"This device is not present, not working properly, or does not have all the drivers installed" I have deleted that and had windows find it again however when it finds it, it says the same thing. Thanks for the help. Is it possible I might need another add in card that would support this cdrom or is it possible that no mater what I do it is incompatable? Thanks again

Do you currently have any IDE hard drives installed in this computer or are you using SCSI?
Unlike SCSI, IDE can only have two devices connected to a single cable/controller.  One must be setup as Master, and the other Slave.

If there is a hard drive installed on this cable, and you wish to attach the CDRom drive to it as the second device you must first make sure that your hard drive is jumpered to Master, then setup the CDRom to Slave.  Some hard drives have configuration options for "Master, no slave/single drive", "Master, Slave Present", and "Slave".  If the CDRom is the only device attached to that IDE cable/channel then configure it as a Master.

Hope this helps.

Joel R. Helgeson

I do have an ide hard drive. It is a Maxtor. I wiil see if there is a site that can tell me how it is jumpered. I just took it off of my machine and it looks like there are 5 jumper settings. If I change the jumpers on it will it still boot?

You can take the external CDROM out of the casing, and put it in the computer, if your SCSI card has an internal hookup. You will need the jumper settings, but that shouldnt be a problem. It will fit in the 5 1/4" slot without problems. If the case is older, you may need railing, but it will be on the floppy drive.

It would be a shame to move from SCSI to IDE. I used to be a big advocate of IDE over SCSI, but after I got used to SCSI, I found out that SCSI seems to work a lot better than IDE, one main factor is the saving of settings like IRQ's and such.

On the other hand, IDE is cheaper than SCSI, as you probobly know.
 
Still, have you tried what I suggested before?

Let me know.

Where did we all get off with the assumption that we were dealing with an External SCSI CDRom Drive?

jmillsp,
What Model of Maxtor hard drive do you have?  I'll be able to tell you which jumpers to set from that info.

JR

> Where did we all get off with the assumption that we were
> dealing with an External SCSI CDRom Drive?

The Toshiba model XM3401B is a 2X SCSI unit,
with both internal and external models.
Ref.: http://www.reputable.com/sgilist.html
"Reputable Systems SGI Workstations & Peripherals List"

After re-reading the question, I have noticed that there is no mention of it being external. I guess I just was thinking too much of the question, and my own drive. Sorry.

For the SCSI, is it a internal, or external?

The model number is needed for the Maxtor drive, so you can get the correct jumpering.

If the hard drive and CD ROM share the same IDE cable, then the CD ROM has to be set to 'slave', and the HD to Master.

Depending on the Maxtor drive, you may also have a cable select option. Disable it. Same thing for the CD ROM. Cable select basically will detect the drive as Master or Slave by where it is on the ribbon cable.

Next: Check in the BIOS. Note down the parameters of the Hard Drive, then have the machine detect drives if you have that option. It may have to report the CD ROM in the BIOS before Win95 can see it.
 
At that point, go into Win95 and detect the Hard Drive.

1 THING TO NOTE: You have a 486, you may not notice this, however, if you hook up 2 devices to one cable, the drives will go as fast as it's slowest.

So, if you install a 10x CD ROM on the same cable as your HD, then both drives will not go faster than 10x. Just something to note.

Let me know.

Does this problem with CD rom happen with no operating system loaded? (spitting the disk straight out after 5 secs)
Does the motor spin up?

Excellent question.

I have about given up with the scsi drive. Right now I am trying to get the Memorex E-IDE drive installed. It is a 36x and I can not get windows to recognize it. Someone else had this computer before me and I would like to start from ground 0. Is there a way to reformat this drive? It is already setup so that it has a drive c and H on the same drive. It is only a 340 gig Maxtor model 7345at. I would like to start from square one as I am starting to wonder about a corrupt system. I have installed the driver for the new drive in C: but it is still not recognized and as I said windows 95 is not finding it. It appears to me the hard drive has the same jumper setting for stand alone as it does as the master drive. I have the cdrom set as slave. You have all had good answers but I think if I could get this system back to square one I could do something with it. The problem is how can I install windows 95 without a cdrom drive and then there is the problem of the drive having been setup so that it has a drive h as well. Please help me reformat and get this thing to recognize my cdrom. Sincerely

I can help you with that, but you may still have a problem with the CD ROM.

Did you check the BIOS and let it detect hard drives?

Did you also install the DOS drivers to the CD ROM? This may help you get the CD.

There are ways to install without a CD ROM, but that may become problematic. If we can get the CD ROM to work, even in DOS, then we will be able to install windows a lot easier.

Let me know what you find out.

Well,
I'm sure it's a 345 Meg hard drive, rather than a 340 gig (big difference).  But before we do anything like that, lets get the CDRom drive working first because we'll need that to install the operating system (windows 95) should you choose to format and start over.

If you format before we get it working it could take this simple task and turn it into a migrane if you know what I mean.

On the bottom of your hard drive you'll notice 2 separate groups of Jumpers.  One having Jumpers 16-20, and the other being jumpers 22-25.
There are two individual jumpers that you'll be paying special attention to, those are Jumpers 20 & 22.  They are configured as follows:

Drive Compatibility -- Jumper# J22
Disabled*  Open
Enabled  Jumpered

Master/Slave -- Jumper# J20
Only drive in single drive system* = Jumpered
Master in dual drive system = Jumpered
Slave in dual drive system = Open

*Default setting

Your Hard Drive should already be jumpered to support your CDRom on the same cable with your CDRom jumpered as a Slave (of course).  However, if it is not able to recognize the CDRom drive with it attached, you may wish to Enable "Drive Compatibility" (J22 Closed) and see where that get's us.

If you by chance delete the HDD settings from the CMOS while doing your gerfingerpokin, those settings are:

Cyls, 790
Hds, 15
Write PreComp, 0
Landing Zone, 0
Sec/Trk, 57


Let's see where that get's us.

Joel

> I have noticed that there is no mention of it being external.

There is a "mention" which could be taken to *IMPLY* it ...

   I have takin the scsi cable off and put it back on,

This is easy to do with an external drive,
which is probably why he tried this.

As I previously stated, the hard drive is jumpered as master. There is no jumpers on the drive compatability. Where can i get one of those little plastic devils to try as jrhelgeson advises?
I want to note that I have gone into bios and it appears the fixed disk 0 (329mb)-----255   790  15   57  none   none
fixed disk 1 (0 mb)------none
I have tried to have it detect my cdrom or whatever it is suppose to do by hitting the f8 key but it never reads anything different then the above.
Would the fact the the hard drive is partitioned to have another letter assigned to it have anything to do with my problem? I should also indicate that before windows 95 comes up it indicates that I might be missing a system.ini or registry file then goes on to a c:\dos\vfintd.386 then says press any key to continue, of which I do to get to windows 95. Now, I have been trying to start at the dos prompt to see if I can load the necessary driver for the cdrom into dos however it keeps taking me onto windows without going to a c: prompt. I having been pushing number 5 for prompt only. Now you can see why I have been thinking about starting from the beginning. You people are all very smart and I feel a little like the scare crow that needs a brain but I will continue to work with you until you tell me to use this computer as an anchor.

Wow, this question is going everywhere.

How about we get the 36X ide cd going first since the HD appears to work.


If you are really stuck on making the the cd work and think its jumpers are configured ok.

You have a 486.

Therefore you probably don't have a secondary IDE channel so you are mounting the cd with an OLD hd that probably has no idea what UDMA or mode4 is all about and therefore is incompatible.
 
What i suggest is copy the Cd drivers disk,(i assume it has dos drivers). Make it bootable (sys a:) Then edit the config sys(installs the cdrom.sys or whatever its called for you drive) and autoexec.bat (to install mscdex.exe)on the disk.

Disconnect the hd and only have the cd rom.

Check to see if there is a cd rom option in bios. ( there probably won't be in a 486 but there might be an Auto feature)

Reboot with your new floppy and see if the drivers load the ccdrom.

If this works you have 2 choices.
1. Get a compatible cdrom/HD combination  or
2. Get a multi io card with another ide/hd controller on board.

This method will resolve things one way or the other, goodluck.

if this doesn't work,  anchors away:-)

Guess what guys. I finally have a recognized cdrom drive in C: drive. I have not tried to find it in windows again yet as I am burnt out for the day. I will give that a go tomorrow though. Now, can we get to the rest of my question? Maybe I will not have to reformat but I would like to be able to if necessary. Can you tell me step by step in my case what to do since I have a drive that has both a c: prompt and an H:
Also, again, can I get rid othe annoying missing registry or system.ini problem I pointed out previously? I think we are getting closer to smooth sailing and I am going to owe someone big bucks here.

Now that you mention it, I'm sure that your chunk-o-metal & sand will make a great anchor come the year 2000.  

Until then, try this:  You'll need to press F8 to bring up the boot menu, if that's what you want to do.

Did this CDRom drive come with a driver disk or instructions on how to install it?
Have you looked on the driver diskette to see if there are any windows install-able drivers?

regarding my comment back up

Does your machine have 2 seperate IDE chanels.?
Allowing 2 master and 2 slave devices

Hey, jmillsp:

You mentioned that you want to start clean - we can do that.

However, if this problem in the System.ini file is the only one you have, you know that you can always just run the setup, and recover.

You said you have a 340 HD, which is small, but do you have about 50 megs free? if so, we can create what is called a 'flat' on your system.

A flat is just a folder that has all the cabs from the win95 disk. Since you have access to the CD ROM in DOS, just do the following.

1. Boot to DOS

2. get on the c:\ root

3. type in
md 95flat

4. go to the CD ROM drive

5. type in
cd win95

6. type in
copy *.* c:\95flat

All the Cab files will copy over, as well as setup files. You can then either run setup from there, or go into windows, and run setup. Choose 'Safe Recovery".

As for 'Vfintd.386', that file is used with the backup program. To get rid of the error, the best thing to do is install, then uninstall the backup program. You do it like this:

1. Go to Control Panel

2. Add/Remove Programs

3.Windows 95 setup

4. In there, you will see an option for system tools ( I am not on a 95 machine right now, so I am going on memory, here). Hit 'details', and then uncheck the backup program, press OK, then apply. Go back in, and put in the backup program, then if you do not want to keep it installed, then remove it again.

If you keep backup installed, then the vfintd.386 will be in your program, if you remove the backup, then the line in the system.ini will be removed.

Give this a try and let me know.

Well, friends, I am back about where I think I should be. I now have the cdrom drive recognized in windows and dos. I have gotten rid of those pesky error messages and now believe I just may not have to reformat. However, in case I do see the need, can you walk me gently through that process? Remember this drive has both a C and an H prompt. Thanks for all those who helped. It really is a great site for dummies like me and I think there are probably many of us. Thanks again and please answer the above for me as if I were a child.

Read the previous comments by me, and you will know how to run the setup.

J Powers, will your advise for reformatting work even if I have the hard drive set up with a c: and an H:? Thanks, John

The presence of 'C:' and 'H:' indicates that some "compression" is being used.  The H(ost) drive is "uncompressed",
while the 'C:' drive is the "compressed" drive.

If you 'FORMAT' the disk, you'll lose all the data
(except that data which you have backed-up),
plus you may lose the fact that "compression" was in effect.

I think that is a good thing. So, if I understand this right, it really does not matter if part of the drive is compressed or not when I reformat. I do all reformatting from the C prompt, right? I have everything running like a good 486 should right now except one thing. I have absolutely no sound. I wonder if it got corrupted somewhere or what. I have installed a new sound card with its drivers to no avail. I see no conflicts listed in device manager. I did notice curiously though that the mouse is not listed in the device manager but it is working. It appears the necessary files are installed in windows setup for sound. This machine did have another sound-scsi controller on it prior but I deleted those in device manager. Is there something I need to do in registry or somewhere else. I do not even get any sound out of the system speaker.  Thanks for the help, again.

Given that you can access your CD-ROM,
but you are having problems with your mouse and with sound,
it's time to reinstall Windows.
The install procedure should notice that your hard-drive
is a "compressed" drive.
Start Windows, and access the "setup" on the CD-ROM, and do it.

Will this do anything to the registry if there is something in there that shouldn't be or just leave those there? It is not that the mouse is not working but that it just is not shown in the device manager. Thanks again, John

As long as you do not format the H: drive, then the compression will stay. However, the best thing to do is uncompress the drive, then format, and recompress the drive. That way, you have gotten all of the drive, and there are no 'file suprises'.

I would suggest, however, that you may want to look in getting another HD. 170 megs compressed to 340 is not that much, and slows things down. This may have even contributed to the ejecting CD ROM. I just purchased a new 5.4 gig for $150, so you could find a 1 gig drive for about $50 or less.

As for your sound, before you loose internet access, get up on the web and look for updated drivers. If your computer is a Compaq, Gateway, etc., then see if they have any updated drivers for it. Put them on disk, then when you reinstall Windows, you will have the correct updated drivers.

Good Luck.

there is no mention how to uncompress the drive. It was my understanding that it is the C drive letter that is compressed and not the H. I would like to get everything off of both c: and H: and start over with a clean slate as I have a feeling the registry is corrupted someway with the previous soundcard or something. I am not even getting a beep out of the computer at this point. I am afraid if I simply reinstall 95 it will leave the problem in the registry or wherever it happens to be and not solve the problem however if you think it will help, I will reinstall 95 and see if it helps. In regards to updated drivers, this is an Acer machine and the new sound card came with the drivers for same. Is there more drivers out there I need? Thanks, John

> It was my understanding that it is the C drive letter
> that is compressed and not the H.

C == Compressed
H == Host

Since you do most of your work on the 'C:' drive,
that's the drive-letter which refers to the compressed drive.

Before you "trash" your Internet setup,
go through the 'Properties', and write everything down,
so that you can get your Internet access working
right after the reload of Windows.

I already have all that info for the internet. Do you think if I just reintstall windows that will give me sound. Simply reinstalling will not correct the registry if there is a problem there will it? Is there a program that I could install to diagnose the problem? Thanks, John