On 25 Sep 97 09:04am, Mike Bilow wrote to Christopher Greaves:
 MB> Christopher Greaves wrote in a message to All:
 CG> Attempting to add new hardware from the Control Panel brings
 CG> me  to a screen that suggests I place the W95 CDRom in drive
 CG> F:,  which does not exist now!
 MB> During the display of "Starting Windows 95," you can strike the
 MB> F8 key to request a menu of options including booting in "safe
 MB> mode."  This should allow you to see the CD-ROM drive and
 MB> access the Windows 95 CD if needed.
 CG> I have a sneaking suspicion that my problems are related to
 CG> IRQs  or other hexadecimal-horribles.
 MB> Right.  You have a Plug-and-Play machine with a non-PnP network
 MB> card.  Since the machine has no way of knowing what resources
 MB> are assigned to the network card, it can reassign these same
 MB> resources to PnP devices such as the CD.  The most likely
 MB> conflict is that you have the network card on IRQ 15, which is
 MB> used for the secondary IDE channel in an EIDE machine, and this
 MB> is where the CD-ROM drive is usually connected.
 MB> In the CMOS configuration for the machine, there should be some
 MB> way of removing a particular IRQ from the PnP pool.  However,
 MB> IRQ 14 and 15 are special cases, since the EIDE subsystem wants
 MB> them.
Mike, another all too common problem is when Windows95 improperly
identifies the IDE HDD subsystem.  If it does not identify the subsystem
as "Standard IDE/ESDI HDD Controller" but as some other HDD system (like
PIIX but the drivers are not loaded properly or are corrupted) then the
CD-ROM will not be seen.  Fixing the problem is generally as easy as
booting into safe mode and removing all devices listed under the HDD
Controller setting, shutting down, rebooting and allowing Windows95 to
re-identify the hardware as "Standard IDE/ESDI HDD Controller."
George
CNE4
... Blood is thicker than water--and much tastier.
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