CD-ROM's (2) Behaving Badly

[faithsem]

   So glad I foun this place...'bout to tear my hair out on this one!   Newly acquired PC I got at a  garage sale...Win ME (yeah I know).with CD-ROM's not reading ...shows up in the hardware section as working properly..shows up when when you do a str run...put a cd in ..nothing...switched several to make sure  it wasnt the cd...rebooted and went in to see the boot up screen to make sure dos was seeing them...yup...brought up me again still nothing...the guy does NOT have the OS but I did make a boot up disk from the A drive...it DID copy the ATAPI drives...but when I tried to access the drives from DOS...NADA.  My home PC is an XP...I got this one in ? to use for my business several miles away.  The ME does have a couple of USB ports on it and I do have a flashdrive I can port stuff on.  Can I move the cd-rom drivers from the xp to the me???How and where on me would I put them them?  I tried to change the autoexec and config files in ME but then I rebooted it 'erased' them and put them back to the way they were ( and yes I hit file save...did it twice just in case I forgot the 1st time  )

Sorry for the typos...got this new wireless keyboard...had the thing on my lap...sheech   

[street1 (RIP)]

So, what happens with safe mode ?

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm

[patio]

There's a bunch of missing letters in your post...try again.

[street1 (RIP)]

There's a bunch of missing letters in your post...try again.

....and again.

[faithsem]

So, what happens with safe mode ?

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm

Nothing...ME in sfe mode does not recognize either one...Device manager however shows there are 3 CD-ROMs there...I deleted the one no longer there think that was the problem as all three was showing a drive letter of D; clicked OK and got out ...since Safe mode cant see them I rebooted and did a step by step...nope.  Did a regular boot...NOPE...aarrgghh!!!  Wish I had a copy of Win 98 OS...I'd do a fdisk in DOS with the OS on it now and install 98...the guy gave me a copy of XP...but that isnt going to work..not enough memory in it to run

[patio]

Are any of these optical drives on the same IDE channel as the hard drive ...if so remove it.
Actually remove both of them. And remove their references in Device Manager. Then select one and set the jumper to Master and hook it up to the end of the ribbon cable that does not have a hard drive on it.
Re-boot. Pause the BIOS screen and see if the CDRom is being picked up by the BIOS...if so hit the spacebar to continue loading setup and Windows.
Now check Device Manager and see if it is listed.

[faithsem]

I will check it out when I get to the shop tomorrow.  In regular mode it shows only the 2 drives in Device Manager with different drive letters D & E both working properly;when it boots up it does show both drives ATAPI ok...right now I'm willing to try almost anything!

[faithsem]

Did a remove of both drives in Device Manager...shut down the computer and popped the hood...both drives are on a different ribbon cable than the HD...yet both drives are jumped in the CS position.  As I remember the master is free, but the slave is bound...he gave me documentation for the drives...but the WRONG drives...I got a LG and a Samsung; the LG is the one on top...before I put this puppy back together (its in pieces right now at the shop)does anyone know if the LG is to be non jumped and he Samsung jumped or just the opposite?

[patio]

See my post above...you want to only try one at a time until you get it going. Adding more than one device at a time just confuses the BIOS and you could go around in circles for days.
CS = Cable Select. I'm not a big fan of it...

[faithsem]

When I got the machine it orginally had only 1 installed and it was not working.  In a seperate box was the second drive which I installed only after I did all the things to the first one thinking that it was fried.  When I get there today I'll remove the orginal one & see if she fires up.  I am going to remove the jumper from the second one and let it see it as the master.

[patio]

Make sure to check the drive...some need a jumper in place to be seen as master. Master goes at the end of the ribbon cable. And only try one drive at a time.