After a recent crash my DVD drive lost its ability to recognize DVDs, although it will run CDs of other media just fine. After rebooting from the crash, Windows gave me the message that it needed to rebuild the driver file, or something to that effect, so I naturally assumed it was a software/driver issue. Meanwhile, the CD burner works just fine. My OS is poor old Windows98 SE. Post-crash the DVD drive did not appear in my device manager list, but magically reappeared after several reboots. Unfortunately, it was labeled as CD-ROM drive, apparently running on some generic driver. I removed it to make it auto-detect, and the correct label now appears (IDE/DVD ROM 16X), but it still behaves like a CD-ROM drive instead. The hardware is generic, too: although there is a firmware version (3.10), there is no actual brand name, so I have no third-party source for a driver download. And Windows98 is supposed to support this type of drive without a specially-loader driver, right? Questions for the experts: 1) Is this a known glitch of some kind for Windows98 SE? If so, anyone have a workaround? 2) Does this sound like a hardware issue? Can a DVD drive fail only partially, leaving it capable of everything EXCEPT DVDs? 3) I have not tried a complete wipe and reinstall (blech). Could that force Windows98 to "see" the drive for what it is? 4) Any other ideas? Windows98 SE IDE/ATAPI DVD drive ver. 3.10 LG CD-RW CED 8080B Adaptec ASPI 4.60 AMD Athlon 1.1 mhz (Cheap system, I know. I can hear you laughing clear over here.)
Why not go to Windows XP, it is a far superior OS to '98? Not sure if 98 will selct your drivers for you, that is the beauty eith XP. You really need 512RAM to keep things up to speed, as XP uses a lot of RAM.
check the top or bottom of dvd drive for manufacturer label. can also reload 98 on top of self, might correct it self. xp is tempermental on some hardware such as no xp driver available it probably not work. me i rather stay with 98se as i can do things on the dos side you can't with xp with nt format.
