Hi!

Equipment : Sony VAio P3 notebook, Windows 98 SE

Situation: Restored original operating system with Sony's CD's when I bought the machine second hand (on eBay, where else?)

What happens: The CDROM drive obviously works, because that's how I installed the OS! However, it does not show up as a lettered drive in the "My Computer" window.

It shows up OK in the BIOS setup as the secondary IDE channel. It shows up in the Registry with drive "G" assigned. The CD-ROM drive never shows up in Device Manager, although the Sony Proprietary CD-ROM driver was manually installed in Device Manager.

So, in summary, there's a working CD-ROM drive, but Windows doesn't seem to want to map it.

Does anyone have any fancy ideas, like a Registry modification, or some other way to get this thing to map the drive?

Thanks!!!

if you go to the control panel, then to "system", and go to the device manager, do you see any CD-rom drives listed?

I doubt it's there, but it might be useful to know about. (I don't have many other ideas, but others might).

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paul@pleaseohpleasedontspamme.slcentral.com
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems -- P. Erdos

Nope, no CD-ROM shows up in Device Manager...and I have seen suggestions that I can go into the DM and change "lastdrive" or drive letter range, etc. I'd do it if I could but it taint there!

Thanks for the suggestion; I think it's on the right track but the problem lies in 'why the drive doesn't show up in DM' I think....

Try this.....

Open up system properties and click on Performance, then click File system at the bottom of that page. Once a new box opens up click on CD Rom Tab. Do you see anything? Will it let you change the properties for the CD Rom settings?

One other thing, is your BIOS set up to auto on all IDE drives?
If not, try that to.

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Serious Soldier

Yep, thanks for the suggestions. The CDROM tab does show up in performance, and they are all set to Auto (actually the CD was set to CDROM but I changed it to Auto and restarted). Still stealth!

Just a bump...did you ever get it figured out?

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paul@pleaseohpleasedontspamme.slcentral.com
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems -- P. Erdos

Nope, no resolution. I've checked everything, tried reinstalling drivers, etc. I do come up with a problem with the seconary IDE channel, ie.. the driver comes up with the yellow question mark in device manager.

I'm getting to the point where I don't know who to curse...Sony or Microsoft!

Quick 2 blind shots (watch your eyes) I think I once had a utility that would allow you to hide crap if you didnt want them to show up in windows. It was called fix-it utilities 3.0. Other thing is maybe you should use a real/retail win98se or win2k cd and maybe that will fix it.

When in doubt reinstall. =]

-BobNFloyd