CD RW Drives won't work!

It what way don't your programs work? How long is it since you last re-installed the system? Anti-virus software is particularly prone to interfering with CD burners--do you have any installed?

1) You need to clean out everything from all the startup places.
2) You need to get the latest BIOS upgrade
3) Make sure you have suficient RAM, and swap space.
4) Please supply more infoo on the exact message you are getting.
download the Startup COP a free pcmag utility from
                       http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/filters/downloads/0,9077,6008597,00.html

  Run it and it sill show you everything that is listed in all the possible
  startup places. You should disable just about everything you can , including anti-virus software , in your startup.
 This should help with 1.
The others will require visiting the MS windowsupdate site to download patches for the W95 A you are using and your motherboard manufacturer for a newer BIOS download.
See http://www.arstechnica.com/  for a start.

I hope this helps.

Also you might check to make sure you have the latest ASPI drivers from Adaptec.

Failure Conditions:
When using Easy CD Creator with Test first or Create a data cd the dialog box shows no action: bytes,time remaining. Cancel hang up machine.

Direct CD was run for over 2 hours to format, progress bar was completed at 90 plus minutes, never got Disk Ready prompt. Could not exit. Could not remove cd from drive.

I can read cd's.    

Again, update your ASPI drivers..  This may very well fix your problem...

You can get them from Adaptec's Site.

Forget about upgrading to Windows 98, this will cause more problems then you can dream of (including, messing up your bus mastering).  In fact, in the countless 95 to 98 installs I have done on customer units, bus mastering seems to be the most troublesome thing to get working (if at all!).

I had exactly the same problem with my mitsumi cdrw. Froze everytime i tried to run Adaptec or another cdwriter program. It turned out that the CDRW didn't like being in dma mode. Changing that drive to pio mode cured it.
Got some explenation later, saying that the aspi-drivers couldn't work with dma-mode.
Hope this helps.

To Experts:
1. Tried New Version of ASPI from Adaptec. Did not correct error. Still can't write & hangs up system on cancel.
2. Will try another suggestion.

Thanks

tonnybrandt
How do I change from DMA to PIO? My Computer doesn't give me the option.

PS also shut down everything I could with EndTask before running Easy CD.

May be I need a new computer but I'm stubborn.

Thanks to all. Still trying.

Have you tried any other cdr programs such as cdrwin?  You can download a demo from goldenhawks webpage.  It will only let you burn at 1x but at least you'll be able to test.

Go into device manager in control panel and click on + beside the little cdrom icon.  You should see your cd-rw listed there.  right click on it and goto properties.  On one of those tabs you should see where you can uncheck a box which has DMA beside it.  Uncheck this box or make sure that it is unchecked.  Sorry I can't give a more descriptive detail but my workstation here is Win2k and I dont have a 98 station handy.  But that should give you the general location on where to look.

If it is the DMA that is wrong, then you won't be able to burn with any cdwriter-program. I tried 4 different and only winoncd didn't freeze, but halted the program and told me that there had been a scsi-error (and it was an ide drive).
Joefriday has told you were to uncheck dma on the cdrom in win98. I use a configuration tool downloaded from my mainboards manufacturer. I would also check the bios to see if there was any settings for the drive there.
Good luck

To Experts & MYSstephenoh

Gateway finally acknowledged that my IDE Bus Mastering software will cause these problems. They are sending me a disk to update my system Monday 3/27/00. I'll let you know if it works.

Thanks again.

I'm glad to hear that. I hope it fixes the problem.

Community Support has reduced points from 200 to 100

Reducing points to allow split.

You can now accept one of the comments in this thread to award the first expert. For the second expert, you should post a new question in this topic area to award the second half of the points. The new question title should be 'For ExpertName -- 10314723'.

darinw
Customer Service

Points should have been split between
SysExpert 100pts and MYSStepenoh 100pts
The new IDE Bus Master solved the problem. But I went back to Gateway because of SysExpert's comment.

SysExpert, see the question rvseitz created for you:

https://www.experts-exchange.com/jsp/qShow.jsp?ta=hardgen&qid=10321500 

darinw