CD drive "Device is not ready"

[Tripredacus]

Windows 98 FE, having issues with CD drives. Same behaviour with both an IDE and USB CD drive. The drives are detected in Device Manager. They get drive letters in My Computer. Both respond to the Eject command, but when trying to access either drives it immediately will say "Device is not ready" without any attempt to read from the drive. I have reinstalled the chipset drivers and there has been no change. USB mass storage drives work fine.

I can still do the old boot into Safe Mode and remove all of the controllers and drives and reboot/reintall, but besides that is there any other thing I can look at that would effect CD drives in general?

[D.Draker]

3 hours ago, Tripredacus said:

besides that is there any other thing I can look at that would effect CD drives in general?

First thing that comes to mind: Alcohol 120%, Daemon Tools, basically all virtual CD drive software and mounting, emulation tools, virtual drives.

Daemon Tools 3.47 works in Windows 98 SE, that's for sure.

[Klemper]

On 4/5/2024 at 10:36 PM, D.Draker said:

virtual CD drive software and mounting, emulation tools, virtual drives

Yes, they do interfere, and win98 first edition is well known for its incompatibilities. For me, it refused to work with Teac, but worked with Philips perfectly fine.

Did you try another CD drive?

 

[Tripredacus]

A USB CD drive counts as another CD Drive?

I'm also having some foggy memories of having to do something with ASPI from my time at Iomega to resolve issues with ZipCD.

I will check for disk emulator/mounters.

[Tripredacus]

My ASPI memory had to do with Adapter controller cards and not specifically with the CD drives. 

I tried 2 other drives, one works but it has mechanical problems, so perhaps it is actually the drive and not something else. I tested using a Windows 95 CD-ROM boot disk. I'm out of IDE ODDs here, I'll have to dig through the stockpile at home and see if any of those work.

[D.Draker]

On 4/7/2024 at 3:13 AM, Klemper said:

For me, it refused to work with Teac, but worked with Philips perfectly fine.

 

4 hours ago, Tripredacus said:

I tried 2 other drives, one works but it has mechanical problems, so perhaps it is actually the drive and not something else.

Win 98 FE is rather picky with its drives, its been known for decades. Probably SE is much more compatible. But then again, I'm sure you have the reasons to use the First Edition.

 

[Tripredacus]

The CD Drive that gave me the error had been used with this OS for over 20 years now, so it isn't like it is some brand that wasn't compatible. But this computer has sat being unused for a very long time and if the CD drive was the only thing that failed in that period I should count myself fortunate. I can see it being picky about the USB CD drive, which is known working on other systems. It turns out I have about 30 IDE ODDs at home so hopefully one of them will work.

This computer uses Win 98 FE just because that was the newest OS that was available at the time it was installed. Perhaps it may have been technically true that SE had come out by then, but that was back when I was a farmer and didn't have a wider access to software once I later entered the computing industry. I never needed to update it because everything worked and my next computer ran XP so I didn't have any issues with compatibility.