'D' Drive Problems

Question

Have XPS T550 Win 98SE with 15gb unused space on HD:
My D drive is combo Cd-Rom/ DVD player. E drive is CD writer. Both installed new by Dell. Lately when wanting to copy CD, D drive will not recognize media. For some reason the E drive is now the default CD-ROM (default was D drive). Have spent three days reading post here and trying various fixes such as reinstalling software, checking/unchecking multimedia box in Windows set-up, upgrade to newest version of DirectX, cleaning CD's etc. Also, it won't autostart due to drive not seeing any CD installed in this drive but E drive will. Any suggestions are appreciated.

osprey4 · Answer

Keep in mind that Win 98 does not assign a default status to either optical drive, nor do most applications. It simply responds to each drive as required. That said, your problem appears to be an unresponsive CD/DVD-ROM drive. I suggest you start over at Predator's site here (1-0-3):

http://www.the-predator.com/dell/detect.html

You may have a dirty lens. A DVD lense cleaner will cost about $7 at CompUSA or most electronics stores. Or your drive may have failed completely. A replacement 16x DVD drive will cost about $30-40.

Please post back if you still need help or to let me know if you found a solution.

western22 · Answer

Thanks for the help, I resolved the problems via the link you sent. I can't remember exactly how many of the help articles I tried (many) or which one was the cure but I kept working with the help articles until the D-drive started to recognize the media. Also, I invested in a good CD/DVD Lens Cleaner to help keep it working.

osprey4 · Answer

Kudos to Jeff for another satisfied customer!!

Storage, Drives & Media

"D" Drive Problems

Was this post helpful?