Any and all cdrom pc games which I have played before on my system no longer load. The error msg 'a device attached to your system is not functioning' occurs whenever I try to load/start a game. I saw no conflicts in device manager, and both cd roms (40x cdrom and dvd/cdrw combo) play all other cds (music, avi films, dvds on the dvd rom). I have done some net research, but this info only suggests randomly replacing registry files, which seems ludicrous. I do suspect a missing registry file or dll file. Question: how do I find a missing file? I realize WinME is not everyone's favorite, but believe me, I have had to spend more time fixing my friend's brand new pc with XP than my own (PII 450mhz w/ME), which has been working fine for years. Any suggestions?

If you know what file you want to recover, you can go to Run on the Start Menu and type sfc and click OK. This will run System File Checker which will prompt you for every file that is not the original version that shipped with Windows ME ..... or you can tell it which one you want to extract a fresh copy of from the CD.

Have you installed any software (e.g DVD driver update, Windows Media Player 9, etc) or installed anything through Windows Update or installed any new hardware just before the drives stopped reading games CDs?

Thanks for the advice. I tried your suggestion w/ Run/sfc. I get another error msg: 'Windows cannot find sfc. you may....typed incorrectly.... or another open program cannot find a system file.' As for remembering which downloads and mods, that is a tough one. I dl lots of films and I have installed various codecs and tried different media players throughout the summer. I have kept all codecs and uninstalled the media players (freebies just don't work, hence the price, right?). I would like to replace my Windows media player with one super movie and mp3 player, but these sys mods always cause conflicts. I also ran Norton sys works to check/clean my registry. But of course, it can't find missing files, only delete obsolete key entries. Maybe during a codec install or player uninstall I deleted a driver or a dll?

The plot thickens: I decided to reinstall Windows to solve this and various other issues. The Me install cd setup file will not execute, and says THE EXACT SAME ERROR MSG ABOVE. It suggests running scan disk from the dos screen. It also seems that I can't 'see' my dos screen, because lo and behold, my monitor doesn't start until after the Windows splash screen. Come to think of it, I haven't seen the windows startup screen in a year. So I can't use the boot disk or dos menu, since my monitor is off at this point.

Reboot the PC and, as soon as the power comes back on on the base unit, keep pressing F2 and Delete alternately every second until the monitor switches on. You should see that it's gone into the blue BIOS menu screen.

The BIOS is the underlying system on your PC that checks everything when you power on, finding out what types of hard disk you've got, graphics card, sound card, etc. Once it knows how to access your hard disk and stuff, it then loads the boot sector on your hard drive which, in your case, contains instructions to load Windows ME.

From the BIOS boot menu, go into the screen that shows your drives (this is normally the first screen in the list). The 'Primary Master' drive will show settings for your hard disk. Check that either Primary Slave, Secondary Master or Secondary Slave are listed as CDROM drives (should be 2 out of the 3). If they aren't, set those 3 to Auto. Save and Exit the BIOS.

The PC will reboot. Do the CD / DVD drives work any better now?

If not, and you still want to reload Windows ME, then reboot, pressing F2/Delete again to get into the BIOS. One of the menu options will take you into a screen that lists the boot order. On your PC, this is probably listed in the format "A, C, SCSI" or something like that. Set it to "CDROM, A, C" or "A, CDROM, C" or whatever option you have to try either the floppy drive or CDROM drive first and then the hard disk after that.

Alternatively, your BIOS might be modern enough that it lists the boot order in the newer format. This will show a different line for each device, the first being the highest in the list, then the next drive being listed underneath and the third drive being listed at the bottom. Again, make sure the CDROM drive and/or floppy drive appear above the hard disk. Put the Windows ME CD in. Save and Exit the BIOS.

The PC will reboot and will try to boot up off of the CD before the hard disk.

Thanks for the tips. I still can't get my monitor to power on before the desktop appears. During a restart, it shuts down and doesn't start again until the desktop appears. I tried the f2/del suggestion, but it only beeps each time I press one of the two buttons. All the while the screen is black (power is off). I used to go into the bios before, and I am fairly comfortable making adjustments there. Now if I could only get to that pesky blue screen called BIOS...Also, this is the second monitor I've had on this machine, and the behavior is the same.

Any chance you can get hold of another graphics card and try it with that?

Put another graphics card (64mb G4) in and now I see the boot screen. Good advice! I had the card already and was waiting to install it. In the boot sector, however, I didn't see the primary/secondary master/slave menu. I've seen it before and adjusted it (probably on one of my friends pc's during a drive install), but I can't seem to find it now. Just and ide device list with the two hdd, floppy and two cdroms. There was no auto setting for these. After I installed the video card, I started getting (for lack of a better word) redundant program commands. I got a 'load power profile' command twice in my start up menu, then two printer icons in the sys tray. I uninstalled and reinstalled my printer. It now won't communicate with the pc. Says there is a port error. It's on the LP port (can't remember exact name LPT1, LP1...), which I thought was the parallel port. It's a parallel printer. Anyway, solve one problem and more appear. So is this the point where I hear the famous words 'buy another machine with a REAL o/s'??? Maybe I'll try the reinstall of ME or get 2000. Pc is too old to run XP. Thanks again for your help.

Sounds like you found the BIOS screen that I was talking about and the settings are OK.

Your new problem suggests that it has loaded in Safe Mode as this will tend to display lots of old devices (ports, printers, etc). This is quite plausible as you had a few unsuccessful boots because you couldn't see anything on the screen and you then changed the graphics card as well.

If you reboot again and it starts up OK, then the 'redundant' items shouldn't show up. If they do, then wiping the hard disk and installing Windows ME again will forget everything that used to be on there and ought to put it all back on properly. Now that the graphics card is working properly, everything should go to plan.

Thanks for the continued advice. Redundant items are gone, but there is still the problem with the printer not locating a port. I have set it by software and manually. During one of the port tests, I attempted to print from a dos prompt, going through start/programs/accessories/MS-dos prompt. You will never guess which error msg I received:

"A device attached to your system is not functioning."

So whatever is causing this error msg to appear when I attempt to play a game cd, is also affecting other areas of the machine. I ran a virus check, and it came up clean.

Is there a missing dll or vxd or some other such file? If so, how would I locate and replace it? I can't use the windows os cd to locate and replace registry files because of the same error msg.

The more I learn about computers, the more I feel like an idiot