Wife's ancient system "forgets" CDRW

engrbill47

Distinguished
Aug 14, 2001
150
0
18,690
My wife has the hand-me down computer, an AMD 233 mHz K-6, with an ASUS mb. Two Christmas' ago I bought her a PAnasonic CDRw CDROM and installed it. All was well. Until 3 months ago. All of a sudden the software would'nt access the CDRW. Win 98 system says that all is well. But when I try to access it w/ Win Explorer, My Computer or paly a CD game, I get the small grey widow that says "drive E is unaccessible - retry or cancel". I have attempted disconnecting the drive and reconnecting it w/ a reboot in between. I've tried removing the device with device manager, diconnected the device and rebooting and then reconnecting the device and hoping the Win 98 will see a new piece of hardware and "help" me reinstall the device. I have replaced the device w/ a CDROM that works and the cpu/mb does not recognize the new device. What's additionally frustrating is that I was able to "fix" the problem 3 months ago but I have forgotten what I did! All to no avail. Help! I don't want to buy a new mb, cpu, ram, etc. My wife's sloooow machine does everything tha she needs. Has anybody in THG ever come across this problem before and solved it?
 

Spitfire_x86

Splendid
Jun 26, 2002
7,248
0
25,780
Have you tried replacing the old IDE cable with a new one? The problem maybe with the cable. Or you may try connenting to a different IDE controller (primary instead of secondary and vice versa).

If that doesn't work, then you possibly have problem with motherboard's IDE controller. You can buy a new mobo or buy a PCI IDE controller card. New IDE controller cards aren't very cheap, so you may look for a refurbished/"30 day money back warrnty" PCI IDE controller card.

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