Hi Lionel:

It was Friday May 30 2003. "RE: CD-ROM Access," murmured you to Mark.

 >>> vide-cdd.sys is available in many places... himem.sys
 >>> and mscdex.exe are specific to the version of DOS you
 >>> are booting from...

 LH> Okay -- I checked the 486 that is running W95 (the
 LH> computer that I made the DOS boot floppy on) and it
 LH> is missing vide-cdd.sys.

The DOS device driver for the CD could be called almost anything, sadly.

If you know the manufacturer for the CD-ROM, you may be able to find DOS
drivers for it on the manufacturer's website.

For example, on this system the CD-ROM driver's called ATAPCHNG.SYS.

The general requirement is valid for most drivers: config.sys will contain
"device=.sys /d:" and autoexec.bat
will contain a call to MSCDEX.EXE also with a /d parameter. 
can be anything up to 8 characters, and will be referred to by mscdex.

Common names are things like atacd.sys or variations on that theme.

Bear in mind that you can't necessarily expect to be able to use a DOS
CD-ROM driver from one system on another. I have an old Win95 startup disk
lying around somewhere with about six CD-drivers on it, and a config.sys
that contains remarked-out lines for each, so I could try them in turn
until something worked. You may be able to find a generic driver that
works; most ATAPI CD-ROM drives have enough in common that such things are
possible.

 LH> However, I put an ATAPI CD-ROM in the 486, and it is working fine w/o
 LH> the vide-cdd.sys file.  Is this file for DOS only?

Yes. Windows drivers will be established for the drive at install time.
(There's a caveat: at some point in the install process, after the first
boot to Windows for the hardware installation processes to run, the CD-ROM
won't be accessible, so it's genuinely a good idea to install from hard
disk if at all possible.) If autoexec.bat and config.sys on the hard disk
contain the DOS drivers, Windows will remark them out when it installs, as
they're 16-bit drivers and will take precedence over Windows drivers if
loaded.

 LH> Or is
 LH> there some substitute running on the 486 which I could
 LH> copy to the boot floppy in place of vide-cdd.sys?  (It
 LH> does have all of the other files on it, BTW).

Not necessarily. If the machine was upgraded to Win95, it'll probably have
all the legacy drivers lying around. If it was installed clean, then the
DOS driver will only be there if the person who did the original install
had the foresight to copy it onto the system somewhere against possible
future need.

 LH> I also double checked the W95 CD, and in the
 LH> drivers/stocdr/iosupd directory there are three files
 LH> (ios.vxd, qfcheck.exe and qfecheck.hlp), only one of
 LH> which appears to be a driver, and none of which are
 LH> vide-cdd.sys.  Is ios.vxd a possible substitute for
 LH> vide-cdd.sys, or is it an archive of all kinds of drivers
 LH> that has to be opened in the installation process,
 LH> or something along those lines?

If it's a vxd, then it's a Windows not a DOS driver. What you're looking
for will almost certainly have a .sys extension. Keep looking in the
\drivers folder, though: I'm almost sure there are some CD-ROM DOS drivers
lying around.

 LH> Any solutions for the missing cd driver file problem?

The easiest is almost certainly going to be the drive manufacturer's
website, or possibly www.drivers.com. Otherwise, it's gonna be trial and
error for a while.

Bests,

Tim

--- GoldED 3.0.1-os1 at Oblivion