CDR101 Not ready?????

I actually figured out the issue.  I have a dimension 4100 and it seems it was skipping the E drive and using the F drive for the CDrom.  Very strange since the E drive letter seemed to be used for nothing.

Thank you,

Marguerite

Well, I don't want to over simplify your problem, but I was having the same issue yesterday and it turned out that I was just trying to access the wrong drive letter.  For some reason drive E was skipped and the cdrom was drive F.  No idea why...but might be worth trying to access the drive with a couple different drive letters.

If that is not your issue, then I am sorry because I don't know the answer...although someone did respond to another question I posted yesterday...maybe that has some helpful ideas:

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_cdrom&message.id=73965

Hope that helps,

Marguerite

I think that I have figured out the problem (but I'm not 100% sure) so would welcome any further comments but I have solved the problem on my own machine:

Firstly, the problem over the incorrect drive letter.  I believe that if you boot up using a rescue disc or a Windows 98 boot disk the system allocates the drive letters in the following sequence: Floppy drives (A & B), then physical Hard drives and Zip drives (C & D).  At this stage it then creates a virtual drive (Drive E) for the rescue/boot disc in order to load the operating system.  By using a virtual drive, this avoids the risk of trying to rely on what might be a defective floppy or hard drive.  It is only when the operating system is loaded that a drive letter is assigned to the CD-ROM (hence drive F).  You should find that once you are booting from the hard disc again, the CD-ROM returns to its earlier designation of Drive E.

The second issue concerns the ability of the operating system to communicate to and use the CD-ROM.   Windows 98 (and I presume other Microsoft operating systems) contain native drivers that are compatible with a number of different manufacurers' CD-ROM Drives.  I believe that the error message is referring to a driver file MCDR101.exe that is not running correctly because, in your case it may be looking for the CD-ROM in drive E.  Other reasons why you might get this same error message are when you change the CD-ROM itself because not all CD-ROM are compatible with Windows 98 (you can check compatibility on the manufacturer's web site), or if a fault has developed in the drive itself (i.e. it suddenly fails). 

I found a found a work around to get my system working again when I upgraded my HDD using the technical notes issued by Microsoft for copying an operating system from one HDD to a new HDD using the backup function.  (See Microsoft Knowedge Base Article 166172 "Duplicating Windows 95/98/98 Second Edition Installation to a new Hard Disk" http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN};166172).  An alternative is to mirror the entire contents of the old HDD onto the new HDD using special software such as Flipback.  Be careful though to make sure that you copy over the windows registry as this is not normally automatically done unless you specify it under the advanced options.

If you are still getting the error message after all this then try re-setting the NVRAM  (The Dell Knowledge Web site tells you how to do this but make sure you use the correct technique for your particular system as they differ quite a bit).  This was the final thing that I had to do to get the new HDD to work properly with the original CD-ROM.

Good Luck...

Viking 55