Sarasota PC Monitor
Tech Talk (05/03)
The Disappearing CD Drive
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.*
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.I have had a problem with a computer that is running Windows 98 Second Edition. It seemed to be quite unsolvable for more than a month. Since this was on my "experimental" system that I use primarily for software testing under Win98 it wasn't a high priority. But as time passed and I couldn't find answers, it did become rather frustrating. The problem was that I could not access either of the CD drives connected to this computer.
The primary CD drive is an IDE drive connected to the secondary IDE port and jumpered as the master drive on this cable. There was no other drive connected to this IDE cable. The other CD drive is an external HP burner connected to a USB port. Both of these drives were working fine for more than 6 months when, suddenly, and for no reason I could determine, they became inaccessible. Putting a music CD in the IDE drive resulted in nothing. Putting a blank CD-R in the burner and trying to copy data resulted in a "Drive not ready" error. Neither drive could be accessed from Windows Explorer. In both cases they gave either a "Drive not ready" error or a "device connected to system not functioning" error. As is usual with Windows error messages, they didn't really provide any help in solving the problem.
Interestingly, when the computer booted, the BIOS correctly identified the CD drive. In addition, the Windows Device Manager had both drives listed and indicated they were working correctly. However, neither drive could be used.
Frequently, in a situation like this, the problem is a hardware failure. But, it would be highly unlikely that both of these drives would fail simultaneously. I did have a way to test them. The Windows 98 computer is a dual-boot system with Lindows installed on a second drive. So I booted into Lindows and found both CD drives. I ran a music CD on the IDE drive just by popping the CD into the drawer and closing it. No problem! Also, I was able to read data CD's and burn a CD in the external drive. So, the drives did not have a hardware problem.
The next step was to search my Microsoft TechNet DVD for any information related to the error messages I received. There were 34 responses to the "drive not ready" search. Only two of them applied to Windows 98. There were 87 responses to the search on the other error message. In both cases, none of the documents really had a solution for my problem. There was an article on trouble-shooting CD-ROM drives. The suggested solutions included in this were:
(1) Clean the CD.
(2) Exit from unnecessary applications. (The only ones running were Windows and Explorer. Those were hardly ones I could exit. My resources were at 83%.)
(3) Make sure you are using protected mode drivers. (This was verified in the Device Manager.)
(4) Disable DMA. (I did this with no effect on the problem.)
(5) Disable auto-insert. (Again, no effect.)
(6) Remove duplicate drive entries in the Device Manager. (There were none.)
I did some other searches on what I thought might be related topics. Too often the result was 500 files, not all of which were related to CDs or Win98.
So, at this point, Microsoft didn't seem to be able to help. My next step was to search a number of technical sites on the web. None of them seemed to have any thing that might help. In a couple of instances where users reported a CD drive had disappeared the answer was "reinstall Windows 98". I received the same answer from several experienced technical people that I am acquainted with. Sometimes that is easier said than done. Before trying to do that, I posted a query on a tech web site where there are "experts" who provide responses by e-mail. I left a detailed explanation of the problem and just what solutions I had tried. Unfortunately, I never received any suggestions.
It seemed that my only solution was to reinstall my Windows 98SE. I booted the system with a floppy disk that included the DOS drivers for the IDE CD-ROM. It had no problem setting up my drive. So, I put the Win98SE disk in the drive and ran the setup program. The immediate response was "This program requires Microsoft Windows". I had forgotten that this CD is a 98 to 98SE upgrade only. It will not install from DOS. That meant I would have to install the first edition of Win98 and then upgrade again to Win98 SE. That particular solution would open the door to even more problems as far as I was concerned. Re-installing Windows is something that I think should be done only in the last resort.
Instead of installing Win98 why didn't I just restore files from a backup? Sure, but what files needed to be restored? On this computer, I have an image file on CDs. An image file is great if you need to restore an entire disk. My other backups are data files on CD-RWs and it seemed that they would not have the solution for the problem. The main problem, again, is that I could not access anything that was on a CD.
More research was needed into this problem. Since both of the drives worked in a Linux OS and the IDE drive worked in DOS, maybe the problem was the drivers used by Windows. The problem with this is that the Device Manger clearly states "no driver files are needed for this device" when you check the CD-ROM properties. So, if it is a driver problem, what and where are the driver files? Back to the Microsoft TechNet. This time I searched on "protected mode drivers". That brought up 347 responses. After some time trying to search through these articles, I found chapter 10 of the Windows 98 Resource Manual. This chapter was entitled "Disk and File Management". In this chapter they referred to two protected mode drivers which replace the DOS drivers, including the MSCDEX file. These files are cdfs.vxd and cdvsd.vxd.
Now we were getting somewhere. I did a "find" for the two files on my hard drive and found that the cdvsd.vxd was missing from the iosubsys subfolder. I restarted the computer with the floppy disk so the DOS CD drivers would be installed. Next, I used the DOS extract command to copy the files from the compressed cabinet files on the Windows CD to the root directory of the C drive. Then, I copied the missing cdvsd.vxd file from the root to the Windows\system\iosubsys directory. Finally, I restarted the computer. Low and behold, I had both CD drives showing up in Windows Explorer. Testing them by reading data CDs did not result in an error. So, damage to, or deletion of, one driver file had caused the problem.
So why have I gone on at some length about this particular problem? There are some lessons to be learned from all this. One thing I am trying to point out is the importance of driver files for all hardware items in your computer system. This is especially true for any peripherals you add to your system. Always keep the original installation disks that contain the drivers. And, if you download updated drivers, save them to some removable media: zip disk, floppy disk or CD.
This problem also points out that some ability to use DOS commands can be useful. In Windows you use the system file check for Win98 to restore files, providing you have the complete file name. In WinME and WinXP, msconfig allows you to restore files one file at a time. If your Windows cabinet files are located on your hard disk (sometimes in Windows\options\cabs), they can be extracted by these applications without resorting to a CD. However, if the files you need are on a CD, there are times when the DOS extract command is very useful. Just be sure that the syntax you use is absolutely correct. Otherwise, the command will fail and it's a very long command line.
Finally you need to have a floppy disk that has DOS CD drivers loading from the config.sys and autoexec.bat files. So if you haven't made and kept a Windows emergency startup disk, do it now! Too many times I have had to help restore systems where there was no boot disk available. I do carry various boot floppies in my tool kit. But every computer user could solve some of their problems by having a boot floppy (or CD-ROM) that has the basic DOS files on it. It's always best to "Be Prepared" even if you were never a Boy or Girl Scout.
*Dr. Lewis is a former university & medical school professor. He has been working with personal computers for more than thirty years. He can be reached via e-mail at bwsail@yahoo.com or voice mail at 941/925-3047. :
Copyright 2003. This article is from the May 2003 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
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