CDROM drive not recognized (after format HD)

[Guest]

10-Apr-07 / CDROM_Problem

To: Win XP General

Trying to help a friend w/ his puter.

After formating the hard drive (which had a corrupted Win XP Pro on it
before) as he had requested, I tried install Win XP again from the CD but
although the BIOS detected the CDROM drive, Windows said something like "no
files found on drive".

I booted the puter from an old Win ME boot diskette. It's supposed to be ok
for this
sort of thing. The BIOS was set up to boot first from floppy, then from CD,
then from HD 0.

According to friend, The CD drive worked OK just before and the Win XP CD is
accessible via another puter. So I reckon both the drive and the CD are ok.

I reckon it's just a matter of editing autoexec.bat and config.sys to add the
proper mscdex.exe commands - as did in old days - to recognize the CDROM
drive during a DOS boot. I don't have the exact cmnds in my head, so tried
look up some old boot files on my old comp.

Before I did that, I thought I'd put my friend's CD drive in my own comp to
check it
and make sure it was ok. As luck would have it (what else is new?), this
blew my own comp (tho' probably it was just some weird coincidence).

I got a long startup beep from the Phoenix BIOS and nothing on screen.
From what I found on Phoenix website, their BIOS doesn't put out any
single long beeps. Reseated mem board. Processor didn't seem to be
overheating; so don't know what went wrong yet.

In any case, never mind that; want to concentrate on friend's puter first.

Question: How to modify autoexec and config to access the CDROM drive
after a DOS diskette boot?

Win support does have several similar old boot-disk downloads (2001 thru
2004)
available for XP. These are used to create 6 diskettes, just for the purpose
of
loading the right files to make the CDROM accessible and bootable so Win XP
can be installed from it.

6 diskettes! My God! Seems a bit overkill.

Never mind the 'bootable'; I'd just like to make that drive 'accessible'
first. There
were just the 2 mscdex commands required before (in autoexec and config) to
load the cdrom driver and make the device accessible - which is all that
should be necessary.

In any case, not exactly sure what 'bootable' refers to here. All I know is
that in the BIOS we can choose "from which device we want to boot up first".
Sounds like this means "bootable" to me.

I note that my old Win ME DOS boot disk does have mscdex.exe on it.

It also has '0' bytes left on disk; which means I have to take off one of
the less useful files (like mem.exe) in order to be able to edit
autoexec.bat
and config.sys.

Am I on the right track here, or not? And can anybody help w/ those 2
commands?

Really appreciate,

 

[Anna]

10-Apr-07 / CDROM_Problem

To: Win XP General

Trying to help a friend w/ his puter.

After formating the hard drive (which had a corrupted Win XP Pro on it
before) as he had requested, I tried install Win XP again from the CD but
although the BIOS detected the CDROM drive, Windows said something like
"no
files found on drive".

I booted the puter from an old Win ME boot diskette. It's supposed to be
ok
for this
sort of thing. The BIOS was set up to boot first from floppy, then from
CD,
then from HD 0.

According to friend, The CD drive worked OK just before and the Win XP CD
is
accessible via another puter. So I reckon both the drive and the CD are
ok.

I reckon it's just a matter of editing autoexec.bat and config.sys to add
the
proper mscdex.exe commands - as did in old days - to recognize the CDROM
drive during a DOS boot. I don't have the exact cmnds in my head, so tried
look up some old boot files on my old comp.

Before I did that, I thought I'd put my friend's CD drive in my own comp
to
check it
and make sure it was ok. As luck would have it (what else is new?), this
blew my own comp (tho' probably it was just some weird coincidence).

I got a long startup beep from the Phoenix BIOS and nothing on screen.
From what I found on Phoenix website, their BIOS doesn't put out any
single long beeps. Reseated mem board. Processor didn't seem to be
overheating; so don't know what went wrong yet.

In any case, never mind that; want to concentrate on friend's puter first.

Question: How to modify autoexec and config to access the CDROM drive
after a DOS diskette boot?

Win support does have several similar old boot-disk downloads (2001 thru
2004)
available for XP. These are used to create 6 diskettes, just for the
purpose
of
loading the right files to make the CDROM accessible and bootable so Win
XP
can be installed from it.

6 diskettes! My God! Seems a bit overkill.

Never mind the 'bootable'; I'd just like to make that drive 'accessible'
first. There
were just the 2 mscdex commands required before (in autoexec and config)
to
load the cdrom driver and make the device accessible - which is all that
should be necessary.

In any case, not exactly sure what 'bootable' refers to here. All I know
is
that in the BIOS we can choose "from which device we want to boot up
first".
Sounds like this means "bootable" to me.

I note that my old Win ME DOS boot disk does have mscdex.exe on it.

It also has '0' bytes left on disk; which means I have to take off one of
the less useful files (like mem.exe) in order to be able to edit
autoexec.bat
and config.sys.

Am I on the right track here, or not? And can anybody help w/ those 2
commands?

Really appreciate,

Ted:
We'll assume - that as both you & your friend indicate - both the XP
installation CD and the optical drive are non-defective and that the latter
is correctly connected/configured. Obviously, if one or the other *is*
defective or the optical drive is misconnected then that's the problem.

So assuming we're not dealing with defective or misconnected/misconfigured
components it really would help if you would *precisely* describe what
happens when you attempt to boot to the XP installation CD. You mention that
during that attempted boot "Windows said something like "no files found on
drive"." I can't recall ever coming across such a message in this type of
situation so could you describe the exact sequence of events at you attempt
to boot from the installation CD?

1. Is there a "boot from the CD" message?
2. Are the setup files apparently loaded?
3. When do you get an error message? And what, precisely, does that message
contain?
4. Do you ever get to that usual opening install screen asking what do you
want to do?
5. Nothing untoward in the BIOS settings that would prevent a boot to the
CD?
6. Are you reasonably sure the HDD involved is non-defective? Have you
checked it out with the diagnostic utility that (hopefully) is available
from the HDD's manufacturer?

I really don't think manipulation of the autoexec and/or config.sys files in
one way or the other is the solution here. I'm assuming in all this that the
optical drive and other major components of the PC are of relatively recent
vintage - say about five years or so, right?
Anna

 

[Guest]

10:15 Thai time

Anna,

Thanx loads for the reply. Please wait about half hour. Doing some more
checks now, as you suggested and have reply almost ready. I think I may
have found a solution. Looks like possibly a wrong drive cmnd in bootdiskette
autoexec.bat and config.sys. Let you know shortly.

Appreciate,

 

[Guest]

9:42 AM Thai time / Fri.,13-Apr-07

To: Anna

Thanks v m for that informative reply, Anna. Appreciate.

Sorry for delay. Couldn't get back into my message section at this
forum. Kept getting "Error on page". Gave up. Maybe today can get in.


Things have changed. Because of that, the long reply I'd readied no
longer applies. Been swamped w/ 3 other bad HD's since then.

Let me just say, there were no 'misconnects'. I've done too many of
these. Am old, retired electronics tech. Many years into batchfiles and
CMOS and Analog IC hobby design/construct projects. So no problems on
those scores. Problem is, came to the 'puter scene rather late and the
old memory not so hot either anymore. Not to worry though.


Hard disk OK as access was OK before the format. Also, I have full access
to C: & D: partitions now, via the DOS boot diskette. Dir listings ok.
File access OK (via "type" cmd). Forgot if tried Scandisk or not. Will do.
Also will try get the mfr's HD tools.

Sorry, I goofed up on that '0 files' message. Had checked drive D instead
of drive E (the CDROM)! Did a 'Dir' cmnd on drive D: (instead of E and
at end it had said "File not found" followed by "18,181.84 MB free" - all
of which, in my hurry, I hadn't noted! and just told you "0 files found".
Fact is, there was no drive E: to be seen.

For drive E: (CDROM) and all other drives, thru Z:, I get
"Invalid drive specification". Same when I use the spare CDROM drive.

So even tho' BIOS set for CDROM boot first and even tho' one of the
boot disks (the WinME DOS boot disk) had the mscdex.exe driver and
the proper commands in autoexec and config to load it, it was still
no go. No CDROM drive visible.

Things get pretty confusing afterwards because got too involved w/
too many other things at same time.

So I don't want to waste your time on this now. This is just a courtesy
reply (if I can get thru). I will let you know all in good time, once I
get back to this particular problem and probably seek more advice then.

For right now, let me just say that I did at some stage finally get
access to the CD drive but as the WinXP CD took over, it suddenly
aborted the install. I forget the reason. At that point I had to get
on with other things.

One of the reasons for the confusion and the non-CD-access was the
funky floppy drive. Sometimes it worked ok; sometimes not. Let you
know when things clear.

Meantime, thanks for your advice. I will follow up on every bit of
that, you can be sure.

Thanks again for now,