So, I upgraded to Windows 98. This means it no longer reads my CD Rom drive, claiming that the driver has expired. But it won't upgrade to a later driver, claiming that the driver installed is the latest. I went to the CD Rom website and downloaded the latest patch, but it caused the CD Rom drive to split into two drives: D and E, which Windows 98 says it will do. It has also made the machine crawl so slowly that I cannot access my C drive anymore and can only look at A drive things. I cannot install anything. I cannot deinstall anything. I don't know how to trick the computer into deinstalling the E drive and going back to just the D drive.

Also it periodically won't read the CD rom drive at all. It will just spin the CD around for a while and then shut down.

I tried updating the Windows 98 from the first to the second edition, and it asks me if I'd like to upgrade to the second edition and then tells me that it can't unless I use an upgrade CD, which is what I thought I was using.

It no longer reads my scanner. I cannot reinstall the scanner, because I cannot access the CD Rom.

Right now I just want to figure out a way to get the machine to read my c drive. Putting in a start up disk doesn't seem to work because then it just wants to format my hard drive.

Please tell me this isn't my only option. Please.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2000

Answers

Did you install 98 over top your windows 95, or did you remove 95 first?

Here's what I would do in your situation, depending on how much free space you have on your hard drive.

1> Rename your c:\windows directory to c:\winold or similar.

2> Boot with the 98 startup disk and install a fresh copy of 98. When asked what directory to install into, it will suggest c:\winold. Change that to c:\windows.

This way you will get a clean install without having to reformat your hard drive, using all the 98 drivers that come with it, instead of worrying about driver conflicts as described above.

If this install is successful, then you can run the 98 update from the Start Menu to get the service pack from Microsoft.

After your Windows is setup, you'll have to reinstall your applications. Your documents will still be okay.

If along the way you have problems, you can always nuke the new windows and rename c:\winold back to c:\windows to restore your previous setup.

As a precaution, defintely backup your documents to floppy, zip or cd-rw if at all possible beforehand, just in case.

Hope this helps...

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2000

Is the name of the CD-ROM patch ideinfup.exe? It's an older patch but it solved a similar problem I had a few years ago.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2000

The above should work, although you might want to try something a litle less drastic before reinstalling the system (which usually fixes most problems).

First, copy the \win98 directory off the installation cdrom onto your hard disk (about 170 megs), this will be where you tell windows to look when it asks for the install CD. This would be while the cdrom is still working of course.

Try uninstalling your cdrom drive by deleting it in the device manager. Then when the machine asks you to reboot, choose 'no' and then shut your machine down entirely. After it shuts down, crack the case open, and unplug your cdrom (the big ribbon cable). Restart your system, and this time run the "add new hardware" on the control panel, and allow it to search for new devices. If it finds anything, allow it to install it, if it prompts you to reboot, reboot rerun the "add new hardware" , repeat until it doesn't find anything.

Shutdown the machine again, plug in the cdrom, rerun the "add new hardware" and hopefully everything will work ok.

Sometimes really problematic installs have to be done similar to this, but with everything removed from the computer except the video card.

Hope this helps.

Jeremy

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2000

Ohhh, Jeremy. What have you done?

Beth is going to claw my eyes out. Claw, I tell you.

(Hey, everybody, you guys have been sending great ideas. Thanks. I'll keep you posted)

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2000

Buy a Mac

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2000

Screw the Mac. Overpriced and unmanageable for the power user.

Pamie, I tried to upgrade to the Second Edition, too, but apparently there is a full version and an upgrade version. I guess we need the upgrade versions or to delete Win98 to get to that full version. I'm thinking of installing it to my new secondary hard drive instead.

As for the other problems, and for all the people who have Windows 98, USE the Windows Update tool when you're online. It's above "Programs" on your "Start" button/menu. I can't stress it enough. Use it, dammit. Don't be afraid. It helps you get new and fresher patches or upgrades to Windows 98 and even some 3rd party software. I've found my Windows to be very, very stable after these patches/upgrades. My computer is slightly behind the times, but, I'm quite happy with Windows 98 and scoff at the people who dis it.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2000

"Unmanageable for the power user"? What the fuck does that mean? Is that the new anti-Mac catch phrase? Puke.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2000

I have a G4 Mac at work, and it's pretty damn good for a power user. Of course for a power GAMER that's another story -- I can run Quake III, but it's not as pretty as a PC with a GeForce of Voodoo graphics card...

Now can somebody tell me why my USB Microsoft mouse (the one with the pretty red light on the bottom) keeps going off at seemingly random moments, as if somebody shut off the power switch on it? And then it won't work anymore until I restart and I have to keep a PS/2 mouse plugged in at all times just in case. When that happens, none of my other USB stuff works either. Not enough power to the motherboard maybe?

o.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2000

Here is something else to try. If you can at least get to a C:\ prompt, go to your windows directory and rename (ren) win.com to win.bak (or anything you want, really). Then install win98 second edition from your cdrom. That will allow you to install the full version as if it were the upgrade, keeping all your settings/files intact. Windows 98 (especially second edition) shouldn't need the updated drivers for your cdrom, and it should work. That is, unless you have some kind of freakish cdrom. If you have problems getting this to work, or it still has problems, feel free to email me and I'll see if I can help.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2000

CD-ROM drivers suck. I managed to completely break my spare computer while trying to reinstall Windows after my parents screwed it up beyond recognition - it won't recognise the CD-ROM drive even with the drivers from the original installation disk patched into the startup disk, and since my copy of Win98 is on CD-ROM I can't get any further.

My techie boyfriend, who does this sort of grappling for a living, couldn't fix it over the phone, either. I am bribing him to look at it with apple pie. I strongly suggest this approach.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

Oh. My. God. The person who said "Buy a Mac", is that you Steve Jobs? I mean "The STEVE JOBS"? How very cool that you read Squishy, Sir. I have an iMac and a PowerMac, what a great computer.... I've had Macs forever, sigh. Ok I'm gushing.. :)

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

Okay, here's the update:

I finally got in and uninstalled Windows 98, but the CD I have for the second edition will not install on the machine because it's apparently for a brand new PC that hasn't had any sort of OS on it before (cuz... I use illegal products like that). So I have to get some sort of 98 upgrade CD I guess if I want to go from 95 to 98, yes?

So now my computer is just like it was before the upgrade (it sees my scanner, there's only one CD-Rom drive, etc.) except the driver for the CD Rom still says it's outdated and sometimes it won't read a CD when I put it in. It'll spin the CD around and then stop. The green light will flash on the drive and then it says it cannot access the drive. I open it up and spray some mad oxygen in there and sometimes it'll work again. It reminds me of how we used to fix our eight-track players.

So I guess what I'm looking at now is I have to get an upgrade of 98 so that I can use the webcam. until then i have a 95 machine that sometimes can read it's cd-rom.

any more suggestions?

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

You could try reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling everything from fresh disks. That's done wonders for the stability of the computers on which I've seen it done. Of course, you do lose everything on your hard drive, so a full backup session is in order first...

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

OK, so, I'm going to assume that you installed Windows 98 over Windows 95 before. This could be part of your problem. When Windows 98 installs over Windows 95 (or Windows 95 over Windows 3.1 for that matter), it installs with 'influence' from the previous operating system. This means that Windows 98 assumes that Windows 95 was correct in the drivers that it's using and DLLs that it has, etc.. So, In order to try to remedy this, you need to install a fresh copy of Windows 98 on your computer, and install all of your applications again (Yes, this could mean 'borrowing' those CDs again from your friends. ;) )

OK, so this is what you need to do:

1) You need about 500MB of free disk space to get started; You'll need about 180MB for a copy of the Win98 directory on the CD-ROM drive, and about 300MB of space for a fresh install of Windows 98. Once you have this and your CD-ROM drive is in a happy mood, make a directory on your hard drive called C:\W98INST and copy everything in the :\Win98 directory into it.

2) Reboot your computer. RIGHT when it says "Starting Windows 95...", hit Shift-F5. This will boot you right into a DOS Command Prompt.

3) Because you have a Windows 98 upgrade disk, it's going to look for a 'previous operating system', but really it just looks for a 'win.com' file. So, assuming you only have 1 copy of Windows on your computer (Windows 95), and your Windows 95 directory is C:\Windows, you need to:

1) Type: cd\windows 2) Type: ren win.com win.old

4) Now you need to rename your Program Files directory and your existing Windows 95 directory to something else, just in case something goes wrong, or you want your Favorites, AOL IM Buddy List, or Outlook mail folders, etc. to be there when you install the respective application in Windows 98. To do this:

1) Type: cd\ 2) Type: move windows windows.old 3) Type: move progra~1 progra~1.old

5) Next, you need to install Windows 98. To start the install:

1) Type: cd\w98inst 2) Type: setup

I'm not going to walk you through everything in there because most of the stuff is self explanatory, but a couple things you'll have to be aware of.

- The install will try to install Windows 98 in the C:\Windows.old directory. Make sure you do NOT let this happen. In the 'Install in' prompt, make sure you delete what's there and make it say 'C:\Windows'.

- The seemingly random usefulness of your CD-ROM drive may be caused by a misalignment in the laser. Since you're having trouble getting it to work because of the drivers, I assume it's an old CD- ROM drive. If this is the case, it will be worth it for you to go get another CD-ROM drive. You can get a brand new DVD-ROM drive (Creative Labs Encore package) for $229 for the more elaborate, or a generic 50x CD-ROM drive for $50... Depending on what your budget is ;)

OK. I don't think I'm missing anything, but I'll probably think of something as soon as I press Submit. Anyway, let us know if this works for you..

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

Easy one: Switch to Linux.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

ok, i know this is cheap...

but go to http://support.microsoft.com/support and harass them. i've heard of a lot of people with this problem, give um hell!!

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2000

There's also a site at www.nowonder.com that "The Dallas Morning News" suggested. It's like an on-line help desk. And it's FREE. They support just about anything you can think of, from Windows to Linux to stuff I've never even heard of. They have live or e-mail help. I've never used them myself, but I've heard good things. And since they don't actually work for Microsoft, they probably don't care if you've done something "illegal."

"Joe Bob says check it out."

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

Read this like I'm Crusty The Clown:

"Oooh, gosh, I really screwed up this time. I was too busy with the type-type-type and somehow just deleted ALL of the drivers from my system. But don't you kids worry, because someone at work is going to take a look at it for me tomorrow. I have pledged not to touch it anymore because my fingers are made of Electronic Death."

-- Anonymous, January 13, 2000

Advice in haiku form. What could be more appropriate?

Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.

(Nope, I didn't compose that. I found it online attributed to the prolific poet, Anonymous.)

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2000

I don't even know why I opened this forum. Y'all is smart 'n stuff, guhuh!

-- Anonymous, January 15, 2000

It's possible that your CD-ROM hardware is toast anyway, so spend the $50 or so and get a new one as another responder suggested. Either save the stuff you need to keep or if you don't care about any files on C: and you have a version of 98 that is for a new computer, then boot to DOS from the 98 boot disk and run fdisk and delete the dos partitions and recreate the dos partition. You will probably have to reboot inbetween deleting the old partitions and creating the new partitions. The disk now looks new to 98 so you can reboot for setup and let 98setup do the work (setup will also format the harddrive). This will take about an hour and a half. 98 does come with a lot more third party drivers that did 95. Go with the second edition if you can. Good luck!

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2000