I have an older e-Machines computer that runs Windows 98. It worked reasonably well until I tried to replace its old (physically damaged) CD-ROM drive with a newer model. I've connected the drive to the ribbon cable and power supply. The System | Hardware | Device Manager says that the device "is working properely," but it won't read anything from any disk in it (music, data, programs, whatever). I believe that I've tried all three possible jumper settings (and also no jumper at all). Am I overlooking something?

Following up, I tried a few things yesterday. I have two CD-ROM drives on the cable, one Master and one Slave, both with power. The D: drive was able to boot from the Win 98 Restore CD, and I was able to reinstall Windows without formatting the hard drive. So, the drive *can* read a CD when it wants to. But once the system came up, I learned that both drives were "working properly," but both were "unavailable" when trying to read any CD.

If I boot from the restore disk to MS-DOS mode, I find an R: drive and an S: drive that read CDs. But I can't start Windows from there.

I went into the bios, and found that my Primary and Secondary sources all read "hard disk," so I changed both Secondary sources to CD-ROM. Re-boot. Same thing. Working properly but unavailable to read. I replaced the drivers (from what was on the C: drive -- remember, I have no CD-ROM access). Still unavailable, though "working properly."

It's no big deal: I was only going to use this system for backward-compatibility of software I'm developing.

But it's really crazy.

First thing is to make sure the machines bios recognizes the IDE devices properly. Also ensure ~both~ Primary and Secondary controllers are engaged in the machines bios.

In the primary or first screen (where time, date, floppy type/size, and hard disks etc are) see if you can set the IDE devices to "AUTO" as opposed to "CDROM". The make and model of the CDROM's should come up on the POST screen (Power On Self Test) in their respective places. (ie; Prim. Master=, Prim. Slave=, Secondary Master=, Secondary Slave=)

Going on if the bios is correct, there's a couple of possibilities.

"The D: drive was able to boot from the Win 98 Restore CD, and I was able to reinstall Windows without formatting the hard drive. So, the drive *can* read a CD when it wants to."

Is this the "new" or replacement CDROM drive?

If you've reinstalled windows from a system manufacturers "restore" CD, (which sometimes won't even run or work if any original hardware has been changed) it may have loaded registry values for an original CDROM make/model. Are both CDROM drives properly identified (make/model number) in Device Manager?

If so, expand the Hard disk controllers button. Are both the Primary and Secondary IDE channels listed?

Just to make sure the system knows, right click on the IDE "Master" controller and choose Properties. Then click the Settings tab. In the drop down box change it from "Default" to BOTH.

Another mode of attack is to remove both CDROM drives in Device Manager. Shut down. Restart and the O/S should detect "new hardware". (Again, if the bios is properly set with the devices.) If not, run Add New Hardware in Control Panel. The system should assign the appropriate parameters/drivers etc for both drives.

Dan, I really appreciate your taking the time to explain that. I'll give it a go next chance I get and report back.

I did try removing the optical drives and letting Windows detect them, but I ended up much the same way.

Well, I tried many, many combinations of BIOS settings and jumper configurations, but no matter what I did, Windows 98 said the drives were working fine but refused to recognize any disk in there.

I finally gave up. I backed up the entire C:-drive (just 8 Gb of which maybe 6 Gb were used) and stored the whole thing on one (1) DVD-R, just so that I could recover old e-mails and such later on.

Then I reinstalled Windows 98 (complete, with drive re-formatting) from my recovery disk. Once that was done, I had a clean system with both optical drives working. It should be useful in testing my programs for backward-compatibility. (Actually, one of the drives is a DVD reader, and I have yet to get that working, but I may in time, but at least it reads CDs.)

I suppose the lesson is to always be prepared for the worst.

Thanks for the effort.

Some optical drives don't like being on the same IDE channel with another optical drive. Also, some CD-RW and/or DVD optical drives like being in the MASTER setting.

I'm guessing that the total reformat/reinstall at lease cleaned up any old Registry settings that were complicating the issue.

My philosophy, developed years ago, is to always have backup copies and thus be prepared to reinstall the OS at any time. In fact, you should have a mostly redundant system -- even if it's your old, out-of-date-one -- ready to carry on your important tasks while you trouble-shoot.

I began programming in that era when the fixed disks were quite small, and you kept the permanent copies of everything on floppy disks. So I always thought of the "C:" drive as transient, as working storage; it's a hard habit to shake. No floppies anymore, but I do rely upon CDs, DVDs and external drives a lot!