Both CDRW & DVD players have stopped reading disks

Make sure that you have the lastest firmware for the CDRW.  It is known, as you might already know that win98 does not have the lastest firmware for CDRW's.  

What kind of CDRW & DVD-rom do you currently own?

Best of luck to you, mate!

Hi!

SCSI, what do you mean by win98 not having latest firmware for CDRW's ?

I hope you mean drivers, :)

Since firmware dosen't come with any OSes, that needs to be downloaded from manufacturers homepage and their firmware flashing tool, usualy they got a bootable floppy that can accomplish that.

Updating drivers is a good idea though.

Regards
/Hans - Erik Skyttberg

blow that all away and just install windows xp home edition. i suggest from scratch but if you can only afford the upgrade get that. it will have all the drivers needed for these drives to work. unless the simplest solution is to clean the lenses on the drives.if it cannot read a cd the easiest way is to start the cheapest way and that is clen the laser lenses and clean the cd`s. dust is a computers worst enemy.

p.s. in device manager is there a symbol next to the cd and dvd drives?if there is then there is a driver problem or irq conflict.

Pakiman1's last answer is the first place to go.Look also at the hard disk controllers section in the device manager.If there is an exclamation point in there,
check your performance tab and see if you are running all in 32bit mode, if it is not...look at the desciption of why not.Are you loading MSCDEX in your autoexec.bat?Are you loading real mode drivers in your config.sys?(IE...oakcdrom.sys).Do you have the proper ide drivers loaded for your motherboard or just windows generic drivers.I've personnally solved alot of cd issues, with the correct, updated ide drivers intalled.Especially if you have a VIA controller chipset!

I had the same problem a while back. After doing everything above and extra. I re-installed windows and everything was fine. So to save you alot of time I would suggest to reload your system.

You can also check your jumpers at the back of your drives, and also change the IDE cable. It might be faulty.

Take these steps to reload. ( but you need the win98 CD )

1. Make a Boot Disk in Control panel. Go to add/remove software, click on the setup tab. Insert formatted stiffy into your stiffy drive. Click on Start up disk / make disk / Boot disk ( sorry i'm running XP, I'm doing this from my head. But it's one of them. There is only one option. ) You would also need Format.com and maybe SYS.com. So after you made your Start-up disk. Search for the two files, and copy and paste it to your disk.

2. Restart, and go into your CMOS setup. Check your boot Sequence. Floppy First. Save and exit.

3. Insert your Stiffy. It will boot from it. Type Fomat C:

4. Type SYS C:

5. Type as bellow

    md windows

    cd windows

    md options

    cd options

    md cabs

    cd cabs

It will look like this

c:\windows\options\cabs>

Type copy d:\win98

After the cabs has been coppied, type setup, and follow the steps.

I remember win98 startup disk installing cdrom drivers, but if it doesn't, You wouldn't be able to see you cd-rom in DOS. So you would need to install cdrom drivers.

Restart your system and follow these steps.

cd windows
cd options
cd cabs

copy d:\win98

Make sure you have all the drivers for all your devices, before re-installing windows.

Best of Luck

Liondect

I don't have a Win98 CD.  It came loaded on my system in the cabs.  I do have the serial number however.  Does this change anything as far as your instructions go?
Also...what is the likelyhood that I'll lose data when I do this reinstall?

Thanks for all your help!

i would still upgrade to xp home edition you won`t lose anything and it will find the correct drivers for you. the process will take half the time of the re format days of the old and the chance of reloading win98 using the cabs . the cans still have the same drivers and will not find the roms. unless you have an updated driver cab file for this year.

Okay...but how does one upgrade to XP when the cd drives don't work? Buy an external drive and load it with that?

microsoft website for the make boot.exe floppy disks. it will prompt you for 4 to 6 floppy disks and will prompt you for the cd when it has provided a driver for the cd rom. i have used this technique on my sisters computer that had the same problem and it worked great. i even formatted the hard drive in ntfs but i was not worried about losing the data. you can convert it later if you wish. ntfs is a better file system.

here is a link to a website that will guide you
http://www.bootstrike.com/WinXP/dosinstalling.html?#step3

Hi!

Isn't the computer able to boot from the CD ?

If it's not then I'd say you have something wrong with the hardware and booting floppies won't help.

Can you boot a win98 floppy and access CD from there ?

Regards
/Hans - Erik Skyttberg

that`s true but if the os does not recognize the cd then it won`t work. you could try the 98 boot disk to test it but then you have to abort being no os disk

Hi!

Well if he can't boot from XP cd he sure as hell won't be able to boot from XP disks.

They use same CD drivers.

Regards
/Hans - Erik Skyttberg

i have done it with the same situation. he can`t boot from the cd roms because it does not recognize them. the xp drivers are more updated than win98. guess you must have actually have done it to know.

Do you have Nero Burning Rom installed? - it gave me similar problems. Uninstall and/or upgrade to the latest version.

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