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Solve : CDROM is sick or ignorant?

Answer» <html><body><p>Initially I got in basic Windows XP (have non internet connection with machine)<br/><br/>Then I tried out Ubuntu. The CDROM device read it and loaded Linux completely ( only a 6 Gb HDD) so I did that and fiddled with Linux for a couple of days.<br/><br/>Then I put WinXP Pro back in and got it to revert back to Windows.<br/><br/>Then CDROM started acting up......it would continually start to search for a disk (then stop for 20 sec) then search again.<br/><br/>I found that weird.<br/><br/>It would stop looking once a disk is in the drive, but when I tried to open the disk ( the CDROM device could not see anything if it was Windows type disk. For a while it would read the Linux disc, but now has stopped doing that too.(the reading part) <br/><br/>Understand, I only use the CDROM to put in main programs(such as Windows 98, Windows XP and Linux. No games So it is hardly used.<br/><br/>Right now I got Windows XP GUI<br/><br/>This thing acts like it has almost got all"its marbles"<br/><br/>Does this thing need a driver?<br/><br/>It is in a Dell computer and I had swapped this CDROM for the one that was in it BenqCD-RW<br/><br/>Where is the best place to go to get a driver if that is what I need(which has to go on a 3 1/2 diskette<br/><br/>I have a Creative 36X MX<br/> It is just a reader, I know, but it won't even do that. Optical drives have not needed drivers since WinME...<br/>Replace it.Never had Windows ME. Went from 98se up to a burned copy of XP Pro.(which is tagged by the MS people) so cannot get SP1,2,3 etc.<br/> So, does XPPro basic on disc also carry the same information as ME? I don't assist with non-legit installs so i'm done here...Did not realize you are working for MS. (Don't get too high and mighty - you probably drive a car and use BP fuel). Better go and collect your cheque. Oh, that is right; you are not gonna get any.<br/><br/> It is not like I knew about it in the beginning.....it is I who lost out and have to pay twice for the same product. Not about to do that anytime soon. It interests me that you support the "spyware" that MS has out to watch their product.<br/> So they protected themselves well enough. The most I got is the XP GUI over 98se. You probably don't know anyways(as most high and mighty people don't)<br/><br/>Gotta go and rebuild a optical drive now.friedemann ,<br/><em>Your remarks are out of place.</em><br/>Patio is not a bleeding heart for MS.<br/>All versions of XP can read standard CD-drives.<br/><br/>Your problem lies either in your hardware or your copy of XP is corrupt.<br/>And if you got your copy of XP from an criminal source, you are a sucker. You have no idea of what they did to it.<br/><br/>If you think you are deserve a clean copy pf XP, please explain yourself.<br/>But don't attack people who want to help.Quote from: patio on July 10, 2010, 09:31:49 PM</p><blockquote>Optical drives have not needed drivers since WinME...<br/></blockquote>patio... you might want to change this... drivers haven't been required for Optical drives since windows 95.<br/><br/>Quote from: friedemann on July 11, 2010, 07:08:39 PM<blockquote>Went from 98se up to a burned copy of XP Pro.(which is tagged by the MS people) <br/></blockquote><br/>The discs aren't "tagged". the keys are. All XP discs are the same within a SP/edition. all XP SP2 discs, for example, are exactly the same in every manner. <br/><br/>Quote from: friedemann on July 11, 2010, 07:08:39 PM<blockquote> So, does XPPro basic on disc also carry the same information as ME? <br/></blockquote><br/>Not even sure what you're asking here.<br/><br/>Quote from: friedemann on July 11, 2010, 07:37:04 PM<blockquote>Did not realize you are working for MS.<br/></blockquote><br/>You must have misread. He never said he did. he never even implied it. He's a moderator, therefore it is his responsibility to try to make sure the forum rules are followed (you know, the ones you agreed to when you registered).<br/><br/>forum rules<br/><br/>Quote<blockquote><strong>Unlicensed/Cracked versions of Windows<br/><br/> </strong><ul><li> We will not help with making an illegal or invalid installation of Windows work. You need to get a legitimate key from Microsoft.<br/> To activate Windows go to the Microsoft Product Activation website and follow the instructions to activate Windows or call Microsoft at 1-866-PCSAFETY (1-866-727-2338)<br/></li><li> In the event you bought a computer and are being told your Windows key isn't valid, help is available from this site: Protect Yourself from Piracy</li><li></li></ul></blockquote><br/><br/>It has nothing to do with being "high and mighty" and everything to do with the legal culpability of the Forum administrator as per the contents of the forum itself. <br/><br/>Quote<blockquote> (Don't get too high and mighty - you probably drive a car and use BP fuel).</blockquote>what does British Petrol have to do with this? Least of all Microsoft?<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>Quote<blockquote>It is not like I knew about it in the beginning.....</blockquote><br/>The "This copy of windows is not genuine" prompt could mean anything!<br/><br/>Quote<blockquote>it is I who lost out and have to pay twice for the same product. <br/></blockquote><br/>You're saying 98SE/ME are the same? That's pretty much the case. but XP is part of the NT line and is completely different from the 9x line and the DOS roots that it carried all the way to ME.<br/><br/>Quote<blockquote>It interests me that you support the "spyware" that MS has out to watch their product.</blockquote>A:) he never said he <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/supportedbrbr-3090749" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about SUPPORTED">SUPPORTED</a> "it"...<br/><br/>B:) what the blazes are you on about? what spyware? the cloest thing I can think of is WGA, and that doesn't install automatically. Even then it's pretty much only used by windows update to make sure the install has a legitimate product key (that is, not one forced to skip the activation step)<br/><br/>Quote<blockquote>The most I got is the XP GUI over 98se. <br/></blockquote><br/>forgetting of course the NT subsystem, segregated kernel, true protected memory architecture (windows 9x programs could write all over each other, although it was a little harder then it was with windows 3.1), full support for Unicode (thereby making internationalisation easier, both at the customer level (changing system languages) as well as at the developer level (no need to make sure the codepage can display hte characters in question, or perform gross translations between ASCII and unicode and thereby lose any extended characters (such as Hangul and Kanji characters as well as various other special character sets). Full implementation of paged memory flags, such as being able to define blocks as data or code, meaning that data cannot be the target of the instruction pointer. <br/><br/>Additionally, unlike Windows 9x, 2000/XP, GDI, USER, and KERNEL handles are not limited to 64K. the "OMG all my fonts are system" or crashes from a program that creates USER or GDI handles but doesn't release them are no longer a problem; terminating a process now forces all the open handles in that process to be closed, releasing the various brush, window, pen, device context, and so on handles to be deallocated. Additionally, the implementation of Look-Aside lists in the heap manager allows multiple threads to read and write from a heap without locking the heap globally and therefore suspending all the other threads until the lock is released.<br/><br/>Additionally, the problem of heap fragmentation for large applications was addressed. This was a problem that existed in both windows 9x as well as NT4. I'll spare the extra technical drivel but the end result was better memory management, and that's on top of the better features provided in Windows 2000.<br/><br/>Truly, saying Windows XP is anything like Windows 9x (except perhaps from a distance through frosted glass) is really more an expression of ignorance then it is any sort of belief based on fact. Now, if you were to say windows XP was pretty much windows 2000, well, they are immensely similar, the main difference between 2K and XP is of course the Luna theme used in XP, but there are variety of other ammendments (similar to what I've already stated) some of them were introduced in 2000, some in XP, and some in server 2003.<br/><br/>And let's not forget the changes made to the user <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/interface-11652" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about INTERFACE">INTERFACE</a>; Although the choise to use the blue-green theme as a default is peculiar, the concept of the Luna theme is rather useful. It's a shame that MS didn't start the theme site they planned, that combined with needing to use "signed" themes (now that's silly) can be a mild hurdle. with a few changes any Luna theme can be modified, and when you look at a few that are available it's really a full-featured skin system built right into the operating system.<br/><br/>Some may contend that such changes are useless. of course they are- but consider also that many of those people make utterly false claims like saying that "Windows calculator has been the same since windows 3.1" (which is untrue, since the entire calculation engine was rewritten from the ground up on at least 3 occasions)- it basically proves that "if everything looks the same, people assume it is the same" which in the case of an Operating System is usually a rather flawed gambit.<br/><br/>Quote<blockquote>You probably don't know anyways(as most high and mighty people don't)<br/></blockquote>don't know what? The "inner truth" that despite me having to rewrite a good portion of my programs to get them working on the new NT architecture, that it's all a "smokescreen" and MS took time to purposely change their entire operating system just so that people would think it's different? Wait a minute! But if they changed the entire operating system, then it be different, wouldn't it? And it is, since nearly everything from the very low level memory management API's to the higher level window management API's would be required in order for me to have needed to make the changes I did, such as the few times I accidentally reused a pointer after free() (bloody debugger is supposed to flag those things...) which worked on 9x, but not in NT. Although fixing that did solve the mysterious crash bug I had been trying to track down for ages at the time.<br/>Quote<blockquote>Gotta go and rebuild a optical drive now.<br/></blockquote><br/>...<br/><br/>If you are trying to boot to the "burned" XP CD, it may be that it's not <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/bootable-7665304" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about BOOTABLE">BOOTABLE</a>, or it could be an upgrade edition, or, more likely then not it was burned/copied improperly. This is of course assuming you hadn't use the disk before, in which case it could be either the disk or the drive (you only state results with the XP and Linux discs, both of which could be damaged or scratched enough to cause the symptoms you describe.<br/><br/><br/><br/>of course it's also fully possible it's not broken at all and may be a OS issue, this could be especially the case since many pirated versions of windows (no matter which version) have presents strewn about (in the worst case) or the person who created it has made decisions for you about what you want on your machine (including removing and adding various "improved" drivers to replace the generic ones that normally come with windows).<br/><br/>I did not ask for help to <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/improve-504932" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about IMPROVE">IMPROVE</a> my access to the Windows system of service packs. I am happy with what is on the disk as it is. It is on 4 computers. <br/> The situation where I am having the problem is that I swapped out the original optical device that was in that machine a BenqCDRW unit and swapped it with a working unit of a different make from another machine. I wanted the burner unit in the faster machine, which it is in and working.<br/> There is NO problem(scratches) on my CD's<br/><br/>Sp I have a Creative Optical reader in a Dell computer that "initially worked". It has seemingly moved backwards after I installed "Ubuntu" full version onto that computer - and then after tasting that morsel decided to go back to XP(which meant I had to feed it the Windows CD again) <br/><br/>It read the disk and installed the XP program again. Then the optical device became blind to information on windows disks, but it was searching for a disk and I could use a Windows type disk and it was quiet..."could not see what was on the disk except that it was "full" and there was no "free space on the disk" <br/><br/>That is why I wondered whether an Optical driver was what was needed.<br/>That Linux nuked the information needed to run the Optical drive.<br/>What do I know. I fix cars, stereos, TV's and appliances. I don't do programming.<br/> I figured a dead non functioning unit was "dead" not semi alive.<br/><br/>Someone stated that optical drive information has been included since Windows Me. <br/><br/>I never got into Me, or 2000 or any other interm editions. I went from Win98se and tried the upgrade to XP.<br/> I never said 98 and XP are the same. I like the XP GUI. I don't need anything more (I have 15 year old machines)<br/> <br/> I know the problem with the Optical drive arose when I yanked out one and swapped it with the other one and basically did not do more than that. Basically - unplug, unscrew checked to be sure the jumpers are the same and swapped. <br/> It was not a simple matter to get the CDRW to work in the other machine either.<br/> I needed an installation disk? Which of course, I knew nothing about ?<br/>Am thinking this is the same type of problem. I have a diskette drive as well.<br/><br/><br/>I don't mean to be pissed off at you guys "but bugger", you stop by my shop and ask for advice on fixing you car (or whatever) and I help. I don't ask if you stole it.<br/> I suggest a fix to the "problem"....which is a "cheap out for many of your tear jerking stories," just to get you by.<br/> If I can't get that in return, I am out of here. At this point the thread could come to a close.<br/>Now there is one point worth considering. Why did the CD drive stopped working? The original poster claims that a version of Linux destroyed the optical drive. Or something to that effect. That is just not possible. Well, very, very unlikely. The drive may have started mechanical breakdown during the installation of Windows XP. It is not uncommon for optical drives to fail either <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/suddenly-654932" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about SUDDENLY">SUDDENLY</a>, gradually, or in unexpected way.<br/>Standard CD-ROM drives can be read both by current Linux systems and current versions of Windows. The drives that require additional drivers are the combination drives with special features. Such as the ability to read and write Blu-Ray discs.<br/>If the original poster wishes to pursue this question here are my observations.<br/>It is possible for an operating system to alter the firmware of the CD-ROM drive. This would be a very unusual thing for the operating system to do. If anybody knows anything about this, please speak up. Otherwise, put the CD-ROM drive and a good working desktop computer. Find the current firmware revision for that particular drive. Then try flashing the firmware of that drive. If the drive comes back to normal operation, this would indicate that somehow the firmware had been altered by some software process. But that is conjecture. The firmware could have failed for other reasons. The firmware chips do get old and tired and they can be refreshed and restored. So it would take quite a bit of diagnostic procedures to determine if the firmware really had been damaged by the operating system. The fact that the CD-ROM drive was already old and had been used for quite while makes it difficult to assume that the damage was done by the operating system.<br/></body></html>


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