Blocked CD ROM

"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
I have an old Compaq computer wit windows 98 SE installed on it. I have a
CD
ROM and a DVD ROM installed on it. The original hard drive was 4
Gigabytes.
I have installed a 40 Gig on it. I want to put a controller on it to plug
the 40 Gig in to.
The hard drive is plugged in to the motherboard at this time. The computer
is not seeing either ROM, and that is the problem. I can't install the
software for the con-
troller because of that. the computer is just seeing a little over 2 Gig
of
the hard drive. Help!

Ugly Trick

"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
I have an old Compaq computer wit windows 98 SE installed on it. I have
a
CD
ROM and a DVD ROM installed on it. The original hard drive was 4
Gigabytes.
I have installed a 40 Gig on it. I want to put a controller on it to
plug
the 40 Gig in to.
The hard drive is plugged in to the motherboard at this time. The
computer
is not seeing either ROM, and that is the problem. I can't install the
software for the con-
troller because of that. the computer is just seeing a little over 2 Gig
of
the hard drive. Help!



Your question has been posed in such as way as to be other than crystal
clear...
so it may take a while to sort through this.

If I understand correctly, once you connected the PCI controller,you lost
your CDROM and DVD ?

There are two possibilities I can think of:


1) You may have jostled the IDE cable your drives are on and disconnected
them

2) The controller has cause some type of conflict which has blocked the use
of your optical drives.


I'd check the cables and if they are OK...
try the controller in another pci slot...or check the bios to see if the pci
slot resources are set to "auto"

Also, if your machine has an AGP video card...some motherboards will
have problems if the PCI slot closest the the AGP slot is used.


There are more issues here...but let's get one thing at a time solved

I had to take the controller card out, because the hard drive would not boot
up plugged in the controller card. I was intending to install the software
after I installed the controller. The CD ROM had worked before I installed
the controller card. So I could not intall the software, because the CD ROM
no longer works. The hard drive works fine plugged back in to the mother
board. Bottom line, the computer does not detect the CD ROM.

Ugly Trick

"Ugly Trick" wrote:

"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
I have an old Compaq computer wit windows 98 SE installed on it. I have a
CD
ROM and a DVD ROM installed on it. The original hard drive was 4
Gigabytes.
I have installed a 40 Gig on it. I want to put a controller on it to plug
the 40 Gig in to.
The hard drive is plugged in to the motherboard at this time. The computer
is not seeing either ROM, and that is the problem. I can't install the
software for the con-
troller because of that. the computer is just seeing a little over 2 Gig
of
the hard drive. Help!

Ugly Trick

EITHER your BIOS has a limitation on what size hard drive the integrated IDE
controller can recognise (possible but the visible drive would likely not be only
2GB in that case, due to the old drive having been seen at GB);

OR when you partitioned the new 40-GB hard drive with FDISK, you responded NO
instead of YES when FDISK asked "Do you wish to enable large disk support (Y/N)?"

If you pressed N instead of Y, you set up the drive using FAT16, which will only set
up the first 2GB of the drive. You would've had to create more partitions 2GB or
less each, until the entire drive had been set up. There is obviously no reason to
set it up that way...FAT32 would allow the full size of the disk to be used. Had
you pressed Y, FAT32 would be used, and the full size of the drive would be
available for one or more partitions.

The easiest solution might be to replace the 40GB drive with the old 4GB drive
temporarily, then wipe the 40-GB clean and repartition it with FDISK, and enable
Large Disk Support; then format and copy the old system to the new drive.
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Windows, A+
http://dts-l.net/
http://dts-l.net/goodpost.htm


"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
I have an old Compaq computer wit windows 98 SE installed on it. I have a
CD
ROM and a DVD ROM installed on it. The original hard drive was 4
Gigabytes.
I have installed a 40 Gig on it. I want to put a controller on it to plug
the 40 Gig in to.
The hard drive is plugged in to the motherboard at this time. The computer
is not seeing either ROM, and that is the problem. I can't install the
software for the con-
troller because of that. the computer is just seeing a little over 2 Gig
of
the hard drive. Help!

Ugly Trick

"Ugly Trick" wrote in message ...
"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
I have an old Compaq computer wit windows 98 SE installed on it. I have a
CD
ROM and a DVD ROM installed on it. The original hard drive was 4
Gigabytes.
I have installed a 40 Gig on it. I want to put a controller on it to plug
the 40 Gig in to.
The hard drive is plugged in to the motherboard at this time. The computer
is not seeing either ROM, and that is the problem. I can't install the
software for the con-
troller because of that. the computer is just seeing a little over 2 Gig
of
the hard drive. Help!

Most hard drive manufacturers have installation software available for
download.

Maxtor and Seagate http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/
Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/download/inde...n&pid=999&swid

If you need to access your CD drives in DOS, see
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Ben

Compaq uses a hidden partition to hold some of the BIOS code and CDROM
driver code on. Unless you use a RESTORE CD on the new hard drive to
create this hidden partition so that it too will with have the proper
CDROM driver, you won't be able to get your CDROM drive to work. It's
a strange way to do things granted but quite often you can just
download a file from Compaq that does the same job as the Restore CD
does that came with your computer originally.

Rumor has it that most Laptops are made the same way but somebody
jumped me on it and since I really don't know that for sure, I've had
to fall back to the "Compaq only" position for a while. Anybody care
to comment?

On May 4, 6:40*pm, Ugly Trick
wrote:
I had to take the controller card out, because the hard drive would not boot
up plugged in the controller card. I was intending to install the software
after I installed the controller. *The CD ROM had worked before I installed
the controller card. *So I could not intall the software, because the CD ROM
no longer works. The hard drive works fine plugged back in to the mother
board. Bottom line, the computer does not detect the CD ROM.

Ugly Trick



"Ugly Trick" wrote:
"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
I have an old Compaq computer wit windows 98 SE installed on it. *I have a
CD
ROM and a DVD ROM installed on it. *The original hard drive was 4
Gigabytes.
I have installed a 40 Gig on it. *I want to put a controller on it to plug
the 40 Gig in to.
The hard drive is plugged in to the motherboard at this time. The computer
is not seeing either ROM, and that is the problem. I can't install the
software for the con-
troller because of that. the computer is just seeing a little over 2 Gig
of
the hard drive. *Help!

Ugly Trick- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thanks Ben.

Ugly Trick

"Ben Myers" wrote:

"Ugly Trick" wrote in message ...
"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
I have an old Compaq computer wit windows 98 SE installed on it. I have a
CD
ROM and a DVD ROM installed on it. The original hard drive was 4
Gigabytes.
I have installed a 40 Gig on it. I want to put a controller on it to plug
the 40 Gig in to.
The hard drive is plugged in to the motherboard at this time. The computer
is not seeing either ROM, and that is the problem. I can't install the
software for the con-
troller because of that. the computer is just seeing a little over 2 Gig
of
the hard drive. Help!

Most hard drive manufacturers have installation software available for
download.

Maxtor and Seagate http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/
Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/download/inde...n&pid=999&swid

If you need to access your CD drives in DOS, see
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Ben

That is an excellent point Lee. Thanks.

Ugly Trick

"Lee" wrote:

Compaq uses a hidden partition to hold some of the BIOS code and CDROM
driver code on. Unless you use a RESTORE CD on the new hard drive to
create this hidden partition so that it too will with have the proper
CDROM driver, you won't be able to get your CDROM drive to work. It's
a strange way to do things granted but quite often you can just
download a file from Compaq that does the same job as the Restore CD
does that came with your computer originally.

Rumor has it that most Laptops are made the same way but somebody
jumped me on it and since I really don't know that for sure, I've had
to fall back to the "Compaq only" position for a while. Anybody care
to comment?

On May 4, 6:40 pm, Ugly Trick
wrote:
I had to take the controller card out, because the hard drive would not boot
up plugged in the controller card. I was intending to install the software
after I installed the controller. The CD ROM had worked before I installed
the controller card. So I could not intall the software, because the CD ROM
no longer works. The hard drive works fine plugged back in to the mother
board. Bottom line, the computer does not detect the CD ROM.

Ugly Trick



"Ugly Trick" wrote:
"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
I have an old Compaq computer wit windows 98 SE installed on it. I have a
CD
ROM and a DVD ROM installed on it. The original hard drive was 4
Gigabytes.
I have installed a 40 Gig on it. I want to put a controller on it to plug
the 40 Gig in to.
The hard drive is plugged in to the motherboard at this time. The computer
is not seeing either ROM, and that is the problem. I can't install the
software for the con-
troller because of that. the computer is just seeing a little over 2 Gig
of
the hard drive. Help!

Ugly Trick- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The BIOS most definitely does have limitations on it. The original hard
drive was a 4 Gig. I bought the controller so that I would be able to install
the 40 Gig, but now it only recognizes a little over 2 Gigs. I did press yes
when it was being formatted. It is formatted to 32 bit. I was trying to keep
from reinstalling the OS. I might have to though. I might have to also use
your suggestion of reinstalling the old hard drive. Thanks.

Ugly Trick

"glee" wrote:

EITHER your BIOS has a limitation on what size hard drive the integrated IDE
controller can recognise (possible but the visible drive would likely not be only
2GB in that case, due to the old drive having been seen at GB);

OR when you partitioned the new 40-GB hard drive with FDISK, you responded NO
instead of YES when FDISK asked "Do you wish to enable large disk support (Y/N)?"

If you pressed N instead of Y, you set up the drive using FAT16, which will only set
up the first 2GB of the drive. You would've had to create more partitions 2GB or
less each, until the entire drive had been set up. There is obviously no reason to
set it up that way...FAT32 would allow the full size of the disk to be used. Had
you pressed Y, FAT32 would be used, and the full size of the drive would be
available for one or more partitions.

The easiest solution might be to replace the 40GB drive with the old 4GB drive
temporarily, then wipe the 40-GB clean and repartition it with FDISK, and enable
Large Disk Support; then format and copy the old system to the new drive.
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Windows, A+
http://dts-l.net/
http://dts-l.net/goodpost.htm


"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
I have an old Compaq computer wit windows 98 SE installed on it. I have a
CD
ROM and a DVD ROM installed on it. The original hard drive was 4
Gigabytes.
I have installed a 40 Gig on it. I want to put a controller on it to plug
the 40 Gig in to.
The hard drive is plugged in to the motherboard at this time. The computer
is not seeing either ROM, and that is the problem. I can't install the
software for the con-
troller because of that. the computer is just seeing a little over 2 Gig
of
the hard drive. Help!

Ugly Trick

Ugly Trick wrote:

I had to take the controller card out, because the hard drive would not boot
up plugged in the controller card. I was intending to install the software
after I installed the controller. The CD ROM had worked before I installed
the controller card. So I could not intall the software, because the CD ROM
no longer works. The hard drive works fine plugged back in to the mother
board. Bottom line, the computer does not detect the CD ROM.

I don't know anything about what Lee writes, but i was thinking
that if the two Optical Drives are on the same (Secondary) IDE
Channel, that during your hardware-tampering, that the settings
for the IDE Controller may have somehow come to disable that
channel. ( For a very, very old machine i have here, 'default' is
that only the Primary channel active. )

Check:
Control Panel : System : DeviceManager : something like '... PCI
Bus Master IDE Controller' : Click the 'Properties' button at the
bottom : Settings-tab.

( And_or go into the BIOS setup, and check the settings there. )


"Ugly Trick" wrote:

"Ugly Trick" wrote in message
...
I have an old Compaq computer wit windows 98 SE installed on it. I have a
CD
ROM and a DVD ROM installed on it. The original hard drive was 4
Gigabytes.
I have installed a 40 Gig on it. I want to put a controller on it to plug
the 40 Gig in to.
The hard drive is plugged in to the motherboard at this time. The computer
is not seeing either ROM, and that is the problem. I can't install the
software for the con-
troller because of that. the computer is just seeing a little over 2 Gig
of
the hard drive. Help!


--
( for 'philo' )
"Stayin' up for days in the Chelsea Hotel,
Writin' /Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands/ for you."

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