That's _nearly_ it! I now get a drive letter for the CD, trouble is I can't read ANY cd's. The error message is:-
"CDR 103: CDROM not High Sierra or ISO-9660 format reading drive x"
I'm still researching the error message using Google. All the solutions I've found so far suggest buring the CD in a slightly different way, but the problem I'm having is that the X200 CDROM can't read any type of CD, yet all the CD's are read fine on other machines (that have a regular IDE CDROM as opposed to a CDROM built into a media bay).
If anyone wants to try the driver, it's called "extcd.sys". Here's what I added to config.sys and autoexec.bat:-
(On the X200) from Windows I can read any CD. Booting from a Win98 bootdisk using the extcd.sys driver, I can't read ANY cds That includes genuine Windows CDs The same bootdisk can read any CD when used on a conventional IDE CD based system (using the appropriate drivers of course). The problem definitely lies with extcd.sys. Maybe an additional driver is required, but most likely is that extcd.sys is not totally compatible, although it does recognise the CD drive and MSCDEX.EXE is able to assign a drive letter to the device.
Do you know what the drive letter is what is being assigned to the cdrom?
What booting steps are you using...
Are you booting to the floppy drive and boot disk first, then when you are a dos prompt, disconnecting your floppy drive, and connecting the CDROM drive?
IMHO, you're question is irrelevant, but maybe you've something up your sleeve, so...
My media bay has a floppy and CD-ROM drive (and when using the media bay, neither device is ever removed). If a boot from a windows 98 floppy using the config.sys and autoexec.bat I posted earlier, then whem mscdex is loaded, it assigns the CD-ROM drive C: (which is to be expected, as my HDD is NTFS formatted).
There's no problem making the C: drive the current drive (obviously, since it exists) but as soon as I try to access anything on the drive (for instance entrering the DIR command), MSCDEX displays the "..high sierra...ISO 9660.." error message.
Unless you can persuade me otherwise, I'm convinced the problem is with extcd.sys not being compatible with the x200 media bay in that it is not wholly presenting the CD-ROM as a typical IDE interface to MSCDEX.EXE.
Maybe you know of other cd-rom drivers I can tryout.
Sorry, I don't remember where I was going with that.
But in any case, your probably right that the driver will not work.
The driver is designed to look for directly connected USB or IEEE device.
Since the drive is in the media base and not directly connected to a USB or IEEE port, that is the reason it probably does not work. The only other thing I can think of is to try and boot to a bootable cd.
Set your cdrom drive as the first boot device in the bios.
Boot the system to a bootable cd that also lets you exit to dos.
Once you are in dos, remove the bootable cd and then insert the cd that you want to use in dos.
Was there ever any resolution to this? I am also experiencing the same difficulties getting the CD-ROM on the Mediabase to be recognized from a DOS boot disk on an X200.
I was able to boot to DOS using the Dell Drivers and Utilities CD-ROM (P/N Y2981 Rev. A14) This looks like a regular Eltorito standard boot CD that puts the CD-ROM in emulation mode. The CD-ROM emulates a floppy disk on drive A:.
Nothing new so far right? So after booting the CD-ROM, I did a DISKCOPY A: B: in the hopes of using the floppy disk as a starting point for my own bootable DOS disk with CD-ROM support. After creating the disk and booting from the floppy, I still get the "CDR103: CDROM..." error. Can anyone help? We are trying to roll-out several DELL X200's and X300's, but we need to use our automated install process which starts with a DOS boot.
Karell
2 Intern
•
2.5K Posts
0
November 14th, 2003 18:00
Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.
You may want to try the following drivers.
Dell USB+1394 CDROM.
_Ritchie_
5 Posts
0
November 15th, 2003 15:00
Hi Karrell,
That's _nearly_ it! I now get a drive letter for the CD, trouble is I can't read ANY cd's. The error message is:-
"CDR 103: CDROM not High Sierra or ISO-9660 format reading drive x"
I'm still researching the error message using Google. All the solutions I've found so far suggest buring the CD in a slightly different way, but the problem I'm having is that the X200 CDROM can't read any type of CD, yet all the CD's are read fine on other machines (that have a regular IDE CDROM as opposed to a CDROM built into a media bay).
If anyone wants to try the driver, it's called "extcd.sys". Here's what I added to config.sys and autoexec.bat:-
-- config.sys --
devicehigh=extcd.sys
-- autoexec.bat --
lh mscdex.exe /d:extcd001
If anyone has any suggestions...
-- Ritchie
Karell
2 Intern
•
2.5K Posts
0
November 17th, 2003 17:00
Can you read standard software or data cds like a Windows cd?
Can you read these cds if you boot to Windows?
Are the cds closed or finalized?
_Ritchie_
5 Posts
0
November 17th, 2003 20:00
Hi,
(On the X200) from Windows I can read any CD. Booting from a Win98 bootdisk using the extcd.sys driver, I can't read ANY cds That includes genuine Windows CDs The same bootdisk can read any CD when used on a conventional IDE CD based system (using the appropriate drivers of course). The problem definitely lies with extcd.sys. Maybe an additional driver is required, but most likely is that extcd.sys is not totally compatible, although it does recognise the CD drive and MSCDEX.EXE is able to assign a drive letter to the device.
Ritchie
Karell
2 Intern
•
2.5K Posts
0
November 18th, 2003 13:00
Do you know what the drive letter is what is being assigned to the cdrom?
What booting steps are you using...
Are you booting to the floppy drive and boot disk first, then when you are a dos prompt, disconnecting your floppy drive, and connecting the CDROM drive?
_Ritchie_
5 Posts
0
November 18th, 2003 18:00
Hi
IMHO, you're question is irrelevant, but maybe you've something up your sleeve, so...
My media bay has a floppy and CD-ROM drive (and when using the media bay, neither device is ever removed). If a boot from a windows 98 floppy using the config.sys and autoexec.bat I posted earlier, then whem mscdex is loaded, it assigns the CD-ROM drive C: (which is to be expected, as my HDD is NTFS formatted).
There's no problem making the C: drive the current drive (obviously, since it exists) but as soon as I try to access anything on the drive (for instance entrering the DIR command), MSCDEX displays the "..high sierra...ISO 9660.." error message.
Unless you can persuade me otherwise, I'm convinced the problem is with extcd.sys not being compatible with the x200 media bay in that it is not wholly presenting the CD-ROM as a typical IDE interface to MSCDEX.EXE.
Maybe you know of other cd-rom drivers I can tryout.
Karell
2 Intern
•
2.5K Posts
0
November 19th, 2003 16:00
Sorry, I don't remember where I was going with that.
But in any case, your probably right that the driver will not work.
The driver is designed to look for directly connected USB or IEEE device.
Since the drive is in the media base and not directly connected to a USB or IEEE port, that is the reason it probably does not work. The only other thing I can think of is to try and boot to a bootable cd.
Set your cdrom drive as the first boot device in the bios.
Boot the system to a bootable cd that also lets you exit to dos.
Once you are in dos, remove the bootable cd and then insert the cd that you want to use in dos.
_Ritchie_
5 Posts
0
November 20th, 2003 06:00
Hi,
I've already tried booting from a bootable CD, and got exactly the same results as booting from a floppy.
Thanks anyway
cjwallace
3 Posts
0
June 1st, 2004 12:00
Xray0210
2 Posts
0
October 28th, 2004 15:00
Was there ever any resolution to this? I am also experiencing the same difficulties getting the CD-ROM on the Mediabase to be recognized from a DOS boot disk on an X200.
Xray0210
2 Posts
0
October 29th, 2004 14:00
Nothing new so far right? So after booting the CD-ROM, I did a DISKCOPY A: B: in the hopes of using the floppy disk as a starting point for my own bootable DOS disk with CD-ROM support. After creating the disk and booting from the floppy, I still get the "CDR103: CDROM..." error. Can anyone help? We are trying to roll-out several DELL X200's and X300's, but we need to use our automated install process which starts with a DOS boot.