Trouble installing new CD Rom

[Parangles]

My setup with 2 hard drives, master/slave on one IDE cable,
and CD reader and burner, master/slave on the other IDE cable
was working fine for years till I installed a new CD ROM drive to replace a bad one and it bluescreened some warning about 32 bit incompatibility.
Now it won't read either CD drive.
Is one hard drive and one CD drive supposed to be on each cable ?
Does it matter which cable primary/secondary has the master HDD etc ?
Thanks,
Chris.

[flanzig1]

Try swapping positions of the CD drives. I had a machine that would not recognize my two CDs at every other reboot, never did get it fixed.

[mrmister1]

Did you take out the CD-ROM on the second cable and install the new one in its place?

The primary IDE, which is usually the one closer to the edge of the board should have the hard drives installed on it, and the secondary which is on the inside of the primary should havet the optical drives connected to it.

Hope that helps

[Parangles]

Thanks ! Yes , all I did was remove one CD drive , & installed the new one in the same position, and rebooted. Also, yes, the two hard drives are on the primary, and the 2 cds on the secondary. I'll try switching the reader and the burner around tonight.
Chris.

[glc]

Did you verify that you jumpered the new drive the same as the one you removed, and that you didn't knock the ribbon cable loose (reseat all 3 connectors......)? If so, your new drive is defective.

[Parangles]

Switched cd's around , no change. Changed the cable to a new one.
I removed the new (second) Cd drive but it still is not seeing even the one CD drive by itself. Changed BIOS setting on Secondary IDE from Auto to ' Cdrom' , but that didnt help. Device Manager is showing a problem with both Primary and Secondary IDE controllers : " either not present/not working/or drivers not installed." Why is it showing a problem with the Primary/hard drives as well ?
This is Win98se and an ASUS A7n266-vm board.
I forgot to re jumper the new install and both Cds were set to Master on first boot after install and I think that is what messed it up.
I have tried rebooting with no cable on the secondary, but it didnt clear it.
What else can I try ? Thanks !

PS: The only CD drive that is now attached is showing/listed in BIOS but not detected by the PC. The CD's manufacturer (memorex)FAQ support says " needs new ide driver', then when you check ' available drivers for this model #' it says : ' no drivers required " Hah!
There are no ide drivers on Microsoft site. Now what ?

[glc]

http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A7N266-VM&Type=All

Might want to reinstall the chipset drivers.

Incidentally, you picked the wrong motherboard to run Win98 on - although it *IS* supported, it doesn't really work too well. The Nforce platform was really designed for Win2K and WinXP.

[Parangles]

Thanks glc- I already downloaded that BIOS upgrade yesterday but don't have the courage to flash bios except as an absolute last resort. I'm now down to just the C drive attached and still !!!'s in device mgr on both ide's. I'll get back.
Chris.

[glc]

No.........not the bios upgrade..........DRIVERS.

FileName chipsetWIN9x_103U.zip Version 1.03U Date 2002/05/20
Description
Win9X/ WinME chipset driver 1.03 package update
More...
File Size 3.24
(MBytes)
OS Win98SE / WinME

[Parangles]

I just installed those chipset drivers with its 'setup' but it didn't help.
After reboot the IDE controller drivers being used are still the old microsoft drivers,with a 1999 date. C:windows\inf\mshcdc.inf
I tried to manually update by feeding it all the .inf files in the package but it wouldn't take them. " best driver is in use "
I am going to try playing with the Bios.
Apprciate your patience !

[Parangles]

glc, I just upgraded the Bios but that did not help.
Is there anything else to do now except buy WinXP and install
it on top of Win98se, since you said this A7n266-vm board is not really
suited for W98 ?
I still think its a IDE driver problem- I don't believe that chipset upgrade
had any in it- but get them from where ?
Thanks,
Chris.

[Hags]

I think i might speak for glc on this one and say yes buy win xp, a whole heck of a lot easier than all the crap ure going through