Strange problem loading cdrom driver with Win98se bootable cd.

[173a]

Hey everyone,

I have this really strange problem with my win98 pc. When I boot from cdrom and try to either "start win98 setup" or "start computer with cdrom support" the disc spins up, a message appears saying it's trying to load some "oak technologies" driver for oemcd001 device and then it just stays there, the system does not freeze, I can ctrl-alt-del to restart and the cursor at the end of the message keeps blinking, but it doesn't load the driver. I used to be able to install windows 98 on this pc just fine, this is not the first time that I'm doing this with this very machine and my win98se cd, an original disc that came with an oem pc back in 2000. The pc configuration is as follows: asus p5pe-vm mobo, c2d 6420, ide cdrom, sata 80gb hdd. I've also tried it with 2 different ide cdroms now, configured as both master and cable select. The storage ports are set to run in "compatibility mode", if I set them to run in "enhanced mode", the system attempts to load the driver and fails (expected behaviour), so I know the drives are functional. The only change to this machine that I can think of, since my last windows 98 reinstall about 2 months ago, was the removal of a slave sata-to-ide adaptered 80gb sata hdd on the same ribbon cable as the cdrom, BUT I cannot see how it can make any difference since I've always disconnected everything but the cd-rom and my system hdd for windows reinstalls. Any ideas on what's going on are very welcome.

[Wunderbar98]

Hi 173a.

Didn't see a comment on the condition of the Windows 98 CD. Under good lighting, any dust, dirt or damage? Can you hear the CD-ROM keep spinning up, like it's trying to read data but can't get a fix?

[173a]

On 2/1/2020 at 11:05 PM, Wunderbar98 said:

Hi 173a.

Didn't see a comment on the condition of the Windows 98 CD. Under good lighting, any dust, dirt or damage? Can you hear the CD-ROM keep spinning up, like it's trying to read data but can't get a fix?

The disc is in very good condition (has literally seen no use between 2000 and 2019) and it was working fine as recently as November maybe. I have also now tried it with a burned oem image and it's the same thing. As for the drive, yes - it spins up, it takes me to the windows 98 cdrom startup menu and then just does nothing.

Edited February 3, 2020 by LoneCrusader
removed link to unredistributable content

[Wunderbar98]

Strange problem indeed. If you haven't already tried, the easiest thing to test would be another IDE ribbon cable. They aren't the most hardy when handled.
Otherwise i would physically unplug and reconnect, don't just jiggle, the relevant IDE and power connections. Lastly maybe try cleaning the CD-ROM laser, the units are pretty easy to open up. Good luck.

Edited February 2, 2020 by Wunderbar98

[173a]

2 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

Strange problem indeed. If you haven't already tried, the easiest thing to test would be another IDE ribbon cable. They aren't the most hardy when handled.
Otherwise i would physically unplug and reconnect, don't just jiggle, the relevant IDE and power connections. Lastly maybe try cleaning the CD-ROM laser, the units are pretty easy to open up. Good luck.

I've tried it with another cable and also a sata drive with a sata-to-ide adapter, so 3 different drives now. Also, all of them show up and work in WinXP (another sata drive) on the same pc, not to mention the original one was working without any issues so recently.

+

I've tried it with 3 different ide cables now, one brand new asus sealed, just opened the baggy now, still no luck.

+

Just tried both the hdd and one of the "suspected culprit" cdroms in another 865g socket 478 mobo, and everything boots and installs fine. Go figure. Still would love to hear any ideas as to what could be happening with that p5pe-vm board, since now it seems like that's where the problem is.

And just to get some things out of the way, with the p5pe, I've tried resetting the cmos several times, starting the pc without the cmos battery, tried few of the various dma modes in the cdrom bios settings (with the pio mode set to 0 the system would properly freeze trying to load the cdrom driver), finally reflashed the bios again to 1501 (the last version, same as I had before though). Tried 2 different ram kits, with both 1 and 2 sticks (512 and 256mb). I can't believe it could be related to the board currently running a c2d (and I know it can't, it was fine a few weeks ago), because that is the only thing that I haven't tried swapping out for something else.

Edited February 2, 2020 by 173a
additional info

[jaclaz]

It could be some sort of "weird" timing issue, maybe having the 80 GB disk (or just the IDE-to-SATA converter) on the same ribbon cable could have changed this slightly (possibly slowing a bit the booting).

jaclaz

[173a]

28 minutes ago, jaclaz said:

It could be some sort of "weird" timing issue, maybe having the 80 GB disk (or just the IDE-to-SATA converter) on the same ribbon cable could have changed this slightly (possibly slowing a bit the booting).

jaclaz

Right, but I've reset cmos several times and flashed the bios since removing it. I could wait for 20 minutes and nothing would happen with that cdrom driver screen, whereas normally it takes like 3 seconds.

Edited February 2, 2020 by 173a

[LoneCrusader]

If you updated the BIOS version from what you were running before when everything worked, it might have changed something in the coding for the HDD controllers. In my experience some "mixed" systems using PATA + SATA still require the use of a SATA CDROM driver (GCDROM.SYS) instead of OAKCDROM.SYS, even on PATA-connected drives. I started to mention this earlier, but since you said everything was working fine before with OAKCDROM.SYS, I figured this wasn't relevant...

[173a]

11 hours ago, LoneCrusader said:

If you updated the BIOS version from what you were running before when everything worked, it might have changed something in the coding for the HDD controllers. In my experience some "mixed" systems using PATA + SATA still require the use of a SATA CDROM driver (GCDROM.SYS) instead of OAKCDROM.SYS, even on PATA-connected drives. I started to mention this earlier, but since you said everything was working fine before with OAKCDROM.SYS, I figured this wasn't relevant...

I reflashed the bios in an effort to fix the issue. How could I force it load the gcdrom.sys?

[LoneCrusader]

1 hour ago, 173a said:

I reflashed the bios in an effort to fix the issue.

If your system was working before the BIOS flash, it may have been a factor. But if the problem appeared before you did so then it's unlikely to have had an effect.

Have you enabled or disabled any of the controllers, potentially altering the order they're recognized in?

After rereading your previous posts, I've seen another possible issue. Previously you had a HDD on the same cable with your CDROM, which, assuming you followed the standard configuration of not having a HDD as a slave on the same cable with an ODD as master, would have made the CDROM the slave on that cable. An issue exists by design with ESDI_506.PDR in Windows where CDROM drives appearing as the primary master on a PATA controller (common on mixed systems where the HDD's are SATA and PATA ODD's are used) are blocked and will not be recognized by Windows. IF any such check exists in OAKCDROM.SYS, it might cause problems here. (Pure speculation; no idea if OAKCDROM contains anything of the kind.)

1 hour ago, 173a said:

How could I force it load the gcdrom.sys?

You would need to download GCDROM.SYS and add it to your boot floppy and load it in CONFIG.SYS using the existing OAKCDROM.SYS as an example.

If you wish to be able to boot and run SETUP from a CD you would need to create a new CD, ripping a copy of yours to an ISO, ripping out the boot (floppy) image from the resulting ISO, editing it in the same way I described above, and then re-inject it into the ISO and burn a new CD.

This is quite a project, and could be a major undertaking if you're not familiar with doing such things. I would suggest you try using a floppy first if you can, in order to be certain GCDROM solves your issue before going any further with the CD.

-

BTW, please do not link to sites redistributing copyrighted software, no matter how old it is. Link above removed.

[173a]

1 hour ago, LoneCrusader said:

This is quite a project, and could be a major undertaking if you're not familiar with doing such things. I would suggest you try using a floppy first if you can, in order to be certain GCDROM solves your issue before going any further with the CD.

I don't have any floppies and yes, it's a major pita. Something screwed my mobo bad, surprised xp boots and runs fine. I will just put together a new win98 box.

And thanks for the detailed instructions with the new boot cd, may try it some other day.

Edited February 3, 2020 by 173a
stuff

[jaclaz]

23 hours ago, 173a said:

Right, but I've reset cmos several times and flashed the bios since removing it. I could wait for 20 minutes and nothing would happen with that cdrom driver screen, whereas normally it takes like 3 seconds.

Yep, but IF there is a timing problem (or race condition or *whatever*) on the bus that won't likely change it.

SImplified, if the BIOS is made of 1 byte, with contents 00110011 you can rewrite it as 00110011 as many times as you want, it was 00110011 before, it is 00110011 now, it will be 00110011 after you have rewritten to it 00110011.

On the other hand - maybe - changing the IDE cable, changing the settings of the drive Master/Slave/Cable Select may make a difference, particularly with coloured cables it is not unheard of "queer" conflicts.

31 minutes ago, 173a said:

I don't have any floppies and yes, it's a major pita. Something screwed my mobo bad, surprised xp boots and runs fine. I will just put together a new win98 box.

And thanks for the detailed instructions with the new boot cd, may try it some other day.

JFTY, you don't actually *need* a physical floppy, you can use a USB stick and have on it grub4dos to load a "virtual" floppy (floppy image).

jaclaz

[173a]

Yeh, queer conflicts, sure sounds too complex for me to figure it all out.

 

3 hours ago, jaclaz said:

JFTY, you don't actually *need* a physical floppy, you can use a USB stick and have on it grub4dos to load a "virtual" floppy (floppy image).

I tried it with easy2boot, which I think is grub4dos based, but it reports the resulting exe (the one from my cd it must be) as unbootable (maybe not "unbootable", but it doesn't like something about it) with error 13.

Edited February 3, 2020 by 173a
correction

[jaclaz]

5 hours ago, 173a said:

Yeh, queer conflicts, sure sounds too complex for me to figure it all out.

 

I tried it with easy2boot, which I think is grub4dos based, but it reports the resulting exe (the one from my cd it must be) as unbootable (maybe not "unbootable", but it doesn't like something about it) with error 13.

No exe is involved in booting to a floppy image.

You need the floppy image of course, and you can extract it from your CD or get one of the many copies of "Windows 98 boot disk" available online, if you got one of those they may be packed in a self-extracting .exe, as an example, get from here the suitable .img (not the .exe) file:

https://www.allbootdisks.com/download/98.html

Then you mount it in (say) IMDISK or VFD or use a similar driver or tool capable of editing the contents of the boot image and add the GCDROM.SYS (actually I would suggest XGCDROM:

http://www.mdgx.com/drv.htm

 then you store the image on the same stick as you have the grub4dos (easy2boot is essentially a more handy way to use grub4dos) and from that you load the floppy image, *like* (press "c" to get to the command prompt of grub4dos), assuming that the image is called "mynice.img" and it is in root of the USB stick:

map --mem /mynice.img (fd0)

map --hook

root (fd0)

chainloader /io.sys

boot

jaclaz 

[173a]

The issue appears to have strangely resolved itself. I have already put together another pc, but still decided to give that asus mobo its last chance at redemption (and to try the above recommended floppy image grub4dos boot). I've only used one stick of 256mb (and a previously unused stick if this bit of info could ever be of any importance to anyone going through similar trouble) this time and replaced the gpu from a radeon 9600xt to a 9200, I've also used only 1 sata hdd and 1 sata cdrom (the same ones as in my previous attempts). Surprisingly it gets past the cdrom driver loading bit in a brief and I don't know what did the trick. Essentially the storage config has remained unchanged, since I've been disconnecting the cables from the device-ends of the other storage components in all my previous attempts, there is some chance however that maybe disconnecting them from the mobo did the trick (since I've quickly had to put the thing back together on a piece of cardboard).

Edited February 5, 2020 by 173a
additional info