CD-Rom not working

[FOH]

Not sure if this is the right forum or not, because I'm not sure where the problem is (hardware or software). My sister-in-law wants me to fix her computer but I am stumped. This is an old computer running at a BLAZING 166 MHz!!! It is running Win98.

The computer will play some, but not all, audio CD's, but won?t play any data CD's. Most of the time when I put in a data CD, the CD player will come up and it will try to play it like a audio CD. If you click on the CD drive and try to open it or "explore" it will come up 1 audio track (even though it is not a audio CD at all). If you click on the track to play it, it will say "the disk you are trying to play is not found, please insert disk and try again". A couple of times when trying a data CD, it will lock up and get the "Illegal operation" :| and shut down.

My first thought was the CD drive was not working right, so I tried another CD-Rom drive---same problem. Then I thought maybe driver problems so I looked in "device manager" and it did not show any problems. I tried to search for another driver and it said "the best driver is already installed". I thought about doing a Win 98 repair or re-installation, but I can't cause the CD-Rom won't read the Win 98 disk. Could this be a motherboard issue??

I am not sure where to go from here. Any ideas would be GREATLY appreciated!!!

Thanks

 

[egale]

I would guess it is a corrupt os or drivers. If you remove the cd from device manager and let it reinstall it, maybe that will work. I don't think it is a hardware issue.

 

[FOH]

Thanks for the reply!! I tried removing it, shutting down, restarting and letting it reinstall--- No difference Any other ideas would be much appreciated!!

 

[Jiggz]

Place the WIN98 CD in the cd rom and try booting from it. If it boots it tells you the problem is software related and not hardware. So the next thing to do is to re-install the OS. Hopefully that will fix it. I'll also try a regcleaner program.

 

[FOH]

Thanks for the reply. I tried to get into the BIOS to make it boot up to the CD-Rom, but when I hit the delete button to get in, it asked for a password. This is a old computer that has been passed down from Grandparents to kids to grandkids to relatives, etc, etc, etc. So there is no bookwork and no one knows the password.

When I boot it up here is what information I could get off of it:

American Megatrends Inc.
Trident TVGA BIOS C 5.1
APM BIOS Ver. 1.2
DMI BIOS Ver. 2.0
USB BIOS Ver. 1.0A
AMI Plug and Play Ver. 1.0A

The only lable on the front of the computer is "Net Pro"

Any suggestions on how to get into the BIOS????

 

[mbackof]

Open the case and look at the jumpers. See if they are labeled with abbreviations. If so look for one with RES BIOS or something like that. If you cannot find one like that, or they are all labelled with alphanumeric strings you can try moving the jumper, then booting up the system. If you cannot get into the system, move the jumper back and try changing another jumper. This is annoying, but one of them should reset the BIOS and disable the password. Another thing you could do is get the number string or the BIOS and do some searches on BIOS identifications. Then you could flash the BIOS which should clear the password. Moving the jumpers through trial and error is safer.

 

[Valkyre]

Whip the battery out, should hopefully clear CMOS settings.... try the drive on its own IDE cable. Ensure that if the drive has any jumpers on it that it is set to automatic or Master for the cable....

 

[Matthias99]

I actually dealt with an old Pentium I system last summer. I also had problems with the CD-ROM (though my issue was that it wouldn't boot from CD; it worked fine once it was in Windows). It seemed to just be a problem with the motherboard, and there wasn't anything I could do, as it was so old as to no longer be supported by the manufacturer. I ended up simply tossing it and replacing it with a dirt-cheap Celeron MB/1.2Ghz CPU that I got for like $60 total, which worked fine.

I concur with the last poster -- if you can't find an obvious reset jumper (and be careful about randomly pulling them -- some of them might force the CPU or PCI bus into the wrong clocks, and I don't know how well old Pentium chips take to having the wrong FSB applied), just pull the battery and wait a few minutes. That should reset it.