The Steel Guitar Forum

I have a CD-R I'm trying to use in my CD-ROM drive and the drive doesn't seem to recognize the disk at all. It keeps telling me that the "drive is not accessible", the device (drive) is "not ready", and that "a device attached to the system is not functioning". Now this same drive plays music CDs just fine, as well as regular program CDs (e.g., computer games, etc.). And, also, the CD-R loaded up fine on my laptop, and on my wife's PC. But when I put it into my own desktop PC, the little pilot light in the drive doesn't even come on briefly and there is no 'whirring' sound to indicate that the computer is trying the drive out, and I get the error messages above. So... I'm perplexed. Any suggestions? Do you need more info about my system specs?
Thanks!
Jim<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Jim Cohen on 29 February 2000 at 07:29 PM.]</p></FONT>

I had a similar problem with CD's from PG Music (Band in a Box). They sent me a program disc, apparently made on a CD burner - and it would not work on my 1 year old compaq's CD reader. They sent me another one and I had the same trouble, the CD drive hung up and the only way I could get around it was to reboot the system and then I could unload the CD from the drive.

I finally got a tech support person at PG Music and he told me they have that problem periodically and "not all CD readers are compatible with all CD-R's". They had to finally send me a floppy for the styles disk.
Compaq tech support also confirmed that the 32X CD drive in my PC is not compatible with all CD burners.

I have a HP 8250i CD R/RW drive installed in my Compaq now (along with the CD reader) and my reader is compatible with the HP writer.

The Adaptec burning sofware has an option when I eject the burned CD to "make the CD compatible with drives that operate under WIN95/98 and NT4 (with certain release)" or to leave it writeable on the CD-R drive.

Jim, I do know that if a CD-R is made on the home stereo CD-Recorder, that it has to be finalized before it can be read by other Cd drives, wether on a computer or a home CDor auto CD player. On a computer CD-R, there are a couple different modes used for recording. This allows you to use a CD-R for multi-session recording without finalizing each time. This may account for the pronblem you are noticing. Keep in mind, if a CD-RW disc was used, it can only be played back in a CD-RW drive.

Either way, you should be able to read the disc unless there was a problem when the disc was made.

Reading your post again, it sounds like you may have a problem with the driver. If you are running Windows 95/98, it will be set up as plug-n-play. Do not install any other cd drivers with this operating system. If you do, you will have all kinds of problems with your computer. The plug-n-play will create the necessary drivers for new hardware devices. A windows recovery might be needed. Let us know how it turns out for you.

Help may be (IS) here...Tom's Hardware Forum, at Delphi Forums:
http://www.delphi.com/dir-app/search/

And Window 95/98 Annoyances, at annoyances.org:
www.annoyances.org

If you can't find a "fix" there,

......."It Aint Broke"!

Good Luck!

Thanks, guys, but today, for reasons completely unbeknownst to me, my computer decided to recognize the CD-R! At first, although it grudgingly admitted the existence of the various files by showing their icons on screen, it was only willing to install one of them. But I kept closing the screen and reloading it, etc, etc., and it finally gave up the ghost and said, "oh, alright already! You can have your goldarn program!" and then it let me install the whole thing!
Will wonders never cease. Anyway, thanks for the various suggestions!
Jim

Jim;
It may have just been dirty. Get one of those CD-ROM cleaners. The ones with the little brushes on the disk. Run it a few times. I had to three times. Apparently it was very dirty. Things worked pretty smooth after that.

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My best,
Ernie

The Official Buddy Emmons Website
www.buddyemmons.com