I/O Device Error

I didn't know about this group until I did a 'get new groups' in my news
reader. Nice to see some familiar Dell faces here!

I've got a couple of old Gateways (P2 and P4) laying around that I got from
my dad. The P4 is an E4600, 1.6MHz, with 256MB of PC800 rambus, but I just
ordered another 256MB for fun, Even with only the current 256MB ram, it
runs Win2K Pro just fine,

I've got a problem with the optical drives. D is an NEC CD-Rom, and E is a
Plextor CD/DVDR. Both are on the secondary IDE channel with a new cable, D
jumpered master, and E jumpered slave.


D will always read data cds, but only read audio cds about 30% of the time.

E won't read data or audio cd at all. E always gives "The request could
not be performed because of an I/O device error". I've tried setting this
device to PIO only, but no luck.

I seem to remember this problem when my dad gave me the PC, but am not
certain.

Any suggestions on how to get D to always read audio cds, and E to read
anything?

Thanks.

In ,
Boris typed on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:24:22 +0000 (UTC):
I didn't know about this group until I did a 'get new groups' in my
news reader. Nice to see some familiar Dell faces here!

I've got a couple of old Gateways (P2 and P4) laying around that I
got from my dad. The P4 is an E4600, 1.6MHz, with 256MB of PC800
rambus, but I just ordered another 256MB for fun, Even with only the
current 256MB ram, it runs Win2K Pro just fine,

I've got a problem with the optical drives. D is an NEC CD-Rom, and
E is a Plextor CD/DVDR. Both are on the secondary IDE channel with a
new cable, D jumpered master, and E jumpered slave.


D will always read data cds, but only read audio cds about 30% of the
time.

E won't read data or audio cd at all. E always gives "The request
could not be performed because of an I/O device error". I've tried
setting this device to PIO only, but no luck.

I seem to remember this problem when my dad gave me the PC, but am not
certain.

Any suggestions on how to get D to always read audio cds, and E to
read anything?

Thanks.

1) Have you checked the Device Manager and make sure those devices and
others while you are at it all okay?

2) Disconnect one optical drive (no need to change any jumpers) and see
if it works now. Then disconnect that one and try the other one alone.

3) Could be laser trouble. DVDs have two lasers as well. One for CDs and
one for DVDs. And lasers last about as long as light bulbs. They can
also flicker like bulbs as well and go intermittent. Cleaning the lens
might help, but I haven't had much luck there.

Others might have some other ideas. And you could try #2 again and have
each drive used alone using the master jumper and then the slave jumper.
That controller could have problems too. Maybe try using the slave from
the hard drive controller and see if that helps any?

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) - Windows XP SP2

"BillW50" wrote in -
september.org:

In ,
Boris typed on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:24:22 +0000 (UTC):
I didn't know about this group until I did a 'get new groups' in my
news reader. Nice to see some familiar Dell faces here!

I've got a couple of old Gateways (P2 and P4) laying around that I
got from my dad. The P4 is an E4600, 1.6MHz, with 256MB of PC800
rambus, but I just ordered another 256MB for fun, Even with only the
current 256MB ram, it runs Win2K Pro just fine,

I've got a problem with the optical drives. D is an NEC CD-Rom, and
E is a Plextor CD/DVDR. Both are on the secondary IDE channel with a
new cable, D jumpered master, and E jumpered slave.


D will always read data cds, but only read audio cds about 30% of the
time.

E won't read data or audio cd at all. E always gives "The request
could not be performed because of an I/O device error". I've tried
setting this device to PIO only, but no luck.

I seem to remember this problem when my dad gave me the PC, but am not
certain.

Any suggestions on how to get D to always read audio cds, and E to
read anything?

Thanks.

1) Have you checked the Device Manager and make sure those devices and
others while you are at it all okay?

Yes, that's what is strange. Device Manager reports both 'working
properly'. The hard drive controller reports fine. In all the places
where the OS reports the optical drives condition, all reports are fine.
System information (Accessories) reports fine.


2) Disconnect one optical drive (no need to change any jumpers) and see
if it works now. Then disconnect that one and try the other one alone.

Will do.



3) Could be laser trouble. DVDs have two lasers as well. One for CDs and
one for DVDs. And lasers last about as long as light bulbs. They can
also flicker like bulbs as well and go intermittent. Cleaning the lens
might help, but I haven't had much luck there.

I have other known good extra optical drives, which I could try.


Others might have some other ideas. And you could try #2 again and have
each drive used alone using the master jumper and then the slave jumper.
That controller could have problems too. Maybe try using the slave from
the hard drive controller and see if that helps any?


Using the primary channel slave connection is a great idea. I know that
connection works, because I had a slave hard drive connected to it two
nights ago to transfer some files to the master hard drive.

Thanks.

"BillW50" wrote in
:

In ,
Boris typed on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:24:22 +0000 (UTC):
I didn't know about this group until I did a 'get new groups' in my
news reader. Nice to see some familiar Dell faces here!

I've got a couple of old Gateways (P2 and P4) laying around that I
got from my dad. The P4 is an E4600, 1.6MHz, with 256MB of PC800
rambus, but I just ordered another 256MB for fun, Even with only the
current 256MB ram, it runs Win2K Pro just fine,

I've got a problem with the optical drives. D is an NEC CD-Rom, and
E is a Plextor CD/DVDR. Both are on the secondary IDE channel with a
new cable, D jumpered master, and E jumpered slave.


D will always read data cds, but only read audio cds about 30% of the
time.

E won't read data or audio cd at all. E always gives "The request
could not be performed because of an I/O device error". I've tried
setting this device to PIO only, but no luck.

I seem to remember this problem when my dad gave me the PC, but am
not certain.

Any suggestions on how to get D to always read audio cds, and E to
read anything?

Thanks.

1) Have you checked the Device Manager and make sure those devices and
others while you are at it all okay?

2) Disconnect one optical drive (no need to change any jumpers) and
see if it works now. Then disconnect that one and try the other one
alone.

3) Could be laser trouble. DVDs have two lasers as well. One for CDs
and one for DVDs. And lasers last about as long as light bulbs. They
can also flicker like bulbs as well and go intermittent. Cleaning the
lens might help, but I haven't had much luck there.

Others might have some other ideas. And you could try #2 again and
have each drive used alone using the master jumper and then the slave
jumper. That controller could have problems too. Maybe try using the
slave from the hard drive controller and see if that helps any?


I first tried a known working CD-ROM that I had, and connected it to the
secondary IDE cable, by itself, jumpered as master, and it still
wouldn't play audio CDs, but would read data CDs. At this point,
forgetting to try moving the CD-ROM to the primary IDE channel, with the
OS hard drive, and jumper as slave, I decided to just install a
legitimate copy of WinXP Pro SP1 to another hard drive, saving the
original Win2K Pro, and then move the newly installed WinXP Pro to the
primary hard drive as my new OS. I thought this may solve the CD
problem, and I did want WinXP Pro rather than Win2K Pro, so I could use
newer versions of IE, etc. It did solve the CD problem, but I
discovered something else. Once the new WinXP Pro was successfully
installed, WinXP Pro would only boot in a dual boot condition, when both
hard drives were connected to the primary IDE channel. And then, the
system booted up giving me a choice of OS to boot into, Win2K or WinXP
Pro. Here's the details:

Before doing ANY work on this system, there was Win2K Pro (SP1)
installed on C (80GB WD), a floppy A, and a CD-ROM at D, and a DVD-R at
E. D always read data cds, intermittently read audio cds. E would
never read any cd/dvd. The system would never, ever boot from CD, even
with the BIOS set correctly. If the BIOS was set to boot from CD, I
always got 'insert boot disk in floppy A and hit any key'. If I put a
Win2K Pro boot floppy in A, it did boot up, asking if I wanted CD
support, etc. I'd say yes, and virtual ramdrive was installed, but of
course this wasn't the same as CD hardware support, that is, I still
couldn't boot from D.

I decided to connect a relatively new, very little used, 160GB WD as a
slave, on F, and install WinXP Pro SP1 on it, I connected the drive,
set the jumpers on both C and F, and restarted the machine. Win2K Pro
came up as usual, and I logged on to F to see some of the data that was
still on it from 3 years earlier. That's fine, I'm going to delete it
anyway when I install WinXP Pro on F. I put the WinXP Pro CD in the
CD-ROM D, and it autostarted and the Windows install screen came up, and
said something to the effect that I couldn't install over Win2K Pro,
would I like to do an advanced installation. I said yes, and the CD
automatically formatted F and installed WinXP Pro to F. I didn't see it
repartition F, though, or make it active.

This took about 20 minutes, with some interaction by me. When done, The
WinXP Pro desktop appeared. XP was now on F, and Win2K still on C. I
tried an audio CD in CD-ROM D, and it worked every time. What I
surmised from this is that perhaps the secondary IDE channel controller
that runs when Win2K is operating, is not the proper one, but deleting
and reinstalling it when in Win 2K only installs the same (incorrect?)
one. Don't know, but the CD-ROM D works fine under XP, but not Win2K.

With XP still on slave F, and Win2K still on master C, I restarted the
machine. I now got a dual boot selection screen, allowing me to chose
between the OS, WinXP Pro and Win2K Pro. I wasn't expecting this. I
was expecting only Win2K Pro to come up, since it was on the master.
Did the XP install create this dual boot loader?

I physically removed C (2K), and connected F (XP) as the master (single)
drive. I expected to boot right into XP, but nooooooo. I got 'insert
boot disk in floppy A and hit any key'. I thought, does this drive's
partition marked as active? I had to physically connect C again as
master, and move F to slave, boot into C (2K), navigate to F, and use
Disk Management to activate F. OK. I physically removed C, and put F
(XP) back in as master (single). Still no luck, as I got the same
message, 'insert boot disk in floppy A and hit any key', when I
restarted the machine.

The ONLY way I can get into WinXP Pro is by having BOTH hard drives
installed, and letting the dual boot menu come up, and selecting WinXP
Pro. When both are installed, it doesn't matter how they are jumpered,
slave or master, I get the dual boot menu. But, I do have to have both
installed in the machine.

If just the Win2K Pro hard drive is installed, Win2K comes up like it
always did.

If just the WinXP Pro hard drive is installed, I get 'insert boot disk
in floppy A and hit any key'.

I'd like to get WinXP Pro installed on this thing, somehow. I think my
next step is to make the XP floppy boot set, and try from there.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q310994

In ,
Boris typed on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:57:20 +0000 (UTC):
"BillW50" wrote in
:

In ,
Boris typed on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:24:22 +0000 (UTC):
I didn't know about this group until I did a 'get new groups' in my
news reader. Nice to see some familiar Dell faces here!

I've got a couple of old Gateways (P2 and P4) laying around that I
got from my dad. The P4 is an E4600, 1.6MHz, with 256MB of PC800
rambus, but I just ordered another 256MB for fun, Even with only
the current 256MB ram, it runs Win2K Pro just fine,

I've got a problem with the optical drives. D is an NEC CD-Rom, and
E is a Plextor CD/DVDR. Both are on the secondary IDE channel with
a new cable, D jumpered master, and E jumpered slave.


D will always read data cds, but only read audio cds about 30% of
the time.

E won't read data or audio cd at all. E always gives "The request
could not be performed because of an I/O device error". I've tried
setting this device to PIO only, but no luck.

I seem to remember this problem when my dad gave me the PC, but am
not certain.

Any suggestions on how to get D to always read audio cds, and E to
read anything?

Thanks.

1) Have you checked the Device Manager and make sure those devices
and others while you are at it all okay?

2) Disconnect one optical drive (no need to change any jumpers) and
see if it works now. Then disconnect that one and try the other one
alone.

3) Could be laser trouble. DVDs have two lasers as well. One for CDs
and one for DVDs. And lasers last about as long as light bulbs. They
can also flicker like bulbs as well and go intermittent. Cleaning the
lens might help, but I haven't had much luck there.

Others might have some other ideas. And you could try #2 again and
have each drive used alone using the master jumper and then the slave
jumper. That controller could have problems too. Maybe try using the
slave from the hard drive controller and see if that helps any?


I first tried a known working CD-ROM that I had, and connected it to
the secondary IDE cable, by itself, jumpered as master, and it still
wouldn't play audio CDs, but would read data CDs. At this point,
forgetting to try moving the CD-ROM to the primary IDE channel, with
the OS hard drive, and jumper as slave, I decided to just install a
legitimate copy of WinXP Pro SP1 to another hard drive, saving the
original Win2K Pro, and then move the newly installed WinXP Pro to the
primary hard drive as my new OS. I thought this may solve the CD
problem, and I did want WinXP Pro rather than Win2K Pro, so I could
use newer versions of IE, etc. It did solve the CD problem, but I
discovered something else. Once the new WinXP Pro was successfully
installed, WinXP Pro would only boot in a dual boot condition, when
both hard drives were connected to the primary IDE channel. And
then, the system booted up giving me a choice of OS to boot into,
Win2K or WinXP Pro. Here's the details:

Before doing ANY work on this system, there was Win2K Pro (SP1)
installed on C (80GB WD), a floppy A, and a CD-ROM at D, and a DVD-R
at E. D always read data cds, intermittently read audio cds. E would
never read any cd/dvd. The system would never, ever boot from CD,
even with the BIOS set correctly. If the BIOS was set to boot from
CD, I always got 'insert boot disk in floppy A and hit any key'. If
I put a Win2K Pro boot floppy in A, it did boot up, asking if I
wanted CD support, etc. I'd say yes, and virtual ramdrive was
installed, but of course this wasn't the same as CD hardware support,
that is, I still couldn't boot from D.

I decided to connect a relatively new, very little used, 160GB WD as a
slave, on F, and install WinXP Pro SP1 on it, I connected the drive,
set the jumpers on both C and F, and restarted the machine. Win2K Pro
came up as usual, and I logged on to F to see some of the data that
was still on it from 3 years earlier. That's fine, I'm going to
delete it anyway when I install WinXP Pro on F. I put the WinXP Pro
CD in the CD-ROM D, and it autostarted and the Windows install screen
came up, and said something to the effect that I couldn't install
over Win2K Pro, would I like to do an advanced installation. I said
yes, and the CD automatically formatted F and installed WinXP Pro to
F. I didn't see it repartition F, though, or make it active.

This took about 20 minutes, with some interaction by me. When done,
The WinXP Pro desktop appeared. XP was now on F, and Win2K still on
C. I tried an audio CD in CD-ROM D, and it worked every time. What I
surmised from this is that perhaps the secondary IDE channel
controller that runs when Win2K is operating, is not the proper one,
but deleting and reinstalling it when in Win 2K only installs the
same (incorrect?) one. Don't know, but the CD-ROM D works fine under
XP, but not Win2K.

With XP still on slave F, and Win2K still on master C, I restarted the
machine. I now got a dual boot selection screen, allowing me to chose
between the OS, WinXP Pro and Win2K Pro. I wasn't expecting this. I
was expecting only Win2K Pro to come up, since it was on the master.
Did the XP install create this dual boot loader?

I physically removed C (2K), and connected F (XP) as the master
(single) drive. I expected to boot right into XP, but nooooooo. I
got 'insert boot disk in floppy A and hit any key'. I thought, does
this drive's partition marked as active? I had to physically connect
C again as master, and move F to slave, boot into C (2K), navigate to
F, and use Disk Management to activate F. OK. I physically removed
C, and put F (XP) back in as master (single). Still no luck, as I
got the same message, 'insert boot disk in floppy A and hit any key',
when I restarted the machine.

The ONLY way I can get into WinXP Pro is by having BOTH hard drives
installed, and letting the dual boot menu come up, and selecting WinXP
Pro. When both are installed, it doesn't matter how they are
jumpered, slave or master, I get the dual boot menu. But, I do have
to have both installed in the machine.

If just the Win2K Pro hard drive is installed, Win2K comes up like it
always did.

If just the WinXP Pro hard drive is installed, I get 'insert boot disk
in floppy A and hit any key'.

I'd like to get WinXP Pro installed on this thing, somehow. I think
my next step is to make the XP floppy boot set, and try from there.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q310994

Ok, piece of cake. Hang on before you do anything. I've been here before
many times. I'm going to tell you what you need to do to get XP bootable
on its own. But don't do anything yet until I post how to do it later.
Feel free to do some reading though.

1) Copy ntldr and NTDETECT.com to the XP disk in the root folder.
2) Copy boot.ini to the XP disk in the root folder.
3) boot.ini will need to be edited with notepad or a text editor on this
XP drive.
4) You need a MBR on the XP drive.

And that is it. But I will go into details later.

--
Bill
Windows XP SP2 (5.1.2600)
Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC

In ,
BillW50 typed on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:25:48 -0500:
In ,
Boris typed on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:57:20 +0000 (UTC):
"BillW50" wrote in
:

In ,
Boris typed on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:24:22 +0000 (UTC):
I didn't know about this group until I did a 'get new groups' in my
news reader. Nice to see some familiar Dell faces here!

I've got a couple of old Gateways (P2 and P4) laying around that I
got from my dad. The P4 is an E4600, 1.6MHz, with 256MB of PC800
rambus, but I just ordered another 256MB for fun, Even with only
the current 256MB ram, it runs Win2K Pro just fine,

I've got a problem with the optical drives. D is an NEC CD-Rom,
and E is a Plextor CD/DVDR. Both are on the secondary IDE channel
with a new cable, D jumpered master, and E jumpered slave.


D will always read data cds, but only read audio cds about 30% of
the time.

E won't read data or audio cd at all. E always gives "The request
could not be performed because of an I/O device error". I've tried
setting this device to PIO only, but no luck.

I seem to remember this problem when my dad gave me the PC, but am
not certain.

Any suggestions on how to get D to always read audio cds, and E to
read anything?

Thanks.

1) Have you checked the Device Manager and make sure those devices
and others while you are at it all okay?

2) Disconnect one optical drive (no need to change any jumpers) and
see if it works now. Then disconnect that one and try the other one
alone.

3) Could be laser trouble. DVDs have two lasers as well. One for CDs
and one for DVDs. And lasers last about as long as light bulbs. They
can also flicker like bulbs as well and go intermittent. Cleaning
the lens might help, but I haven't had much luck there.

Others might have some other ideas. And you could try #2 again and
have each drive used alone using the master jumper and then the
slave jumper. That controller could have problems too. Maybe try
using the slave from the hard drive controller and see if that
helps any?

I first tried a known working CD-ROM that I had, and connected it to
the secondary IDE cable, by itself, jumpered as master, and it still
wouldn't play audio CDs, but would read data CDs. At this point,
forgetting to try moving the CD-ROM to the primary IDE channel, with
the OS hard drive, and jumper as slave, I decided to just install a
legitimate copy of WinXP Pro SP1 to another hard drive, saving the
original Win2K Pro, and then move the newly installed WinXP Pro to
the primary hard drive as my new OS. I thought this may solve the CD
problem, and I did want WinXP Pro rather than Win2K Pro, so I could
use newer versions of IE, etc. It did solve the CD problem, but I
discovered something else. Once the new WinXP Pro was successfully
installed, WinXP Pro would only boot in a dual boot condition, when
both hard drives were connected to the primary IDE channel. And
then, the system booted up giving me a choice of OS to boot into,
Win2K or WinXP Pro. Here's the details:

Before doing ANY work on this system, there was Win2K Pro (SP1)
installed on C (80GB WD), a floppy A, and a CD-ROM at D, and a DVD-R
at E. D always read data cds, intermittently read audio cds. E
would never read any cd/dvd. The system would never, ever boot from
CD, even with the BIOS set correctly. If the BIOS was set to boot
from CD, I always got 'insert boot disk in floppy A and hit any
key'. If I put a Win2K Pro boot floppy in A, it did boot up, asking
if I wanted CD support, etc. I'd say yes, and virtual ramdrive was
installed, but of course this wasn't the same as CD hardware support,
that is, I still couldn't boot from D.

I decided to connect a relatively new, very little used, 160GB WD as
a slave, on F, and install WinXP Pro SP1 on it, I connected the
drive, set the jumpers on both C and F, and restarted the machine.
Win2K Pro came up as usual, and I logged on to F to see some of the
data that was still on it from 3 years earlier. That's fine, I'm
going to delete it anyway when I install WinXP Pro on F. I put the
WinXP Pro CD in the CD-ROM D, and it autostarted and the Windows
install screen came up, and said something to the effect that I
couldn't install over Win2K Pro, would I like to do an advanced
installation. I said yes, and the CD automatically formatted F and
installed WinXP Pro to F. I didn't see it repartition F, though, or
make it active. This took about 20 minutes, with some interaction by
me. When done,
The WinXP Pro desktop appeared. XP was now on F, and Win2K still on
C. I tried an audio CD in CD-ROM D, and it worked every time. What
I surmised from this is that perhaps the secondary IDE channel
controller that runs when Win2K is operating, is not the proper one,
but deleting and reinstalling it when in Win 2K only installs the
same (incorrect?) one. Don't know, but the CD-ROM D works fine under
XP, but not Win2K.

With XP still on slave F, and Win2K still on master C, I restarted
the machine. I now got a dual boot selection screen, allowing me to
chose between the OS, WinXP Pro and Win2K Pro. I wasn't expecting
this. I was expecting only Win2K Pro to come up, since it was on
the master. Did the XP install create this dual boot loader?

I physically removed C (2K), and connected F (XP) as the master
(single) drive. I expected to boot right into XP, but nooooooo. I
got 'insert boot disk in floppy A and hit any key'. I thought, does
this drive's partition marked as active? I had to physically connect
C again as master, and move F to slave, boot into C (2K), navigate to
F, and use Disk Management to activate F. OK. I physically removed
C, and put F (XP) back in as master (single). Still no luck, as I
got the same message, 'insert boot disk in floppy A and hit any key',
when I restarted the machine.

The ONLY way I can get into WinXP Pro is by having BOTH hard drives
installed, and letting the dual boot menu come up, and selecting
WinXP Pro. When both are installed, it doesn't matter how they are
jumpered, slave or master, I get the dual boot menu. But, I do have
to have both installed in the machine.

If just the Win2K Pro hard drive is installed, Win2K comes up like it
always did.

If just the WinXP Pro hard drive is installed, I get 'insert boot
disk in floppy A and hit any key'.

I'd like to get WinXP Pro installed on this thing, somehow. I think
my next step is to make the XP floppy boot set, and try from there.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q310994

Ok, piece of cake. Hang on before you do anything. I've been here
before many times. I'm going to tell you what you need to do to get
XP bootable on its own. But don't do anything yet until I post how to
do it later. Feel free to do some reading though.

1) Copy ntldr and NTDETECT.com to the XP disk in the root folder.
2) Copy boot.ini to the XP disk in the root folder.
3) boot.ini will need to be edited with notepad or a text editor on
this XP drive.
4) You need a MBR on the XP drive.

And that is it. But I will go into details later.

Okay I am back. Okay we can fix this, but there is one thing you have to
decide. As the XP drive will be known to XP as drive F and not drive C
the way it was installed. If you can live with that, it should be just
fine. If you can't, there are utilities or a lot of registry hacking to
fix it. But doing either will take about just as long (or longer) as
reinstalling XP all over again.

So if you reinstall XP, no need to fix anything. Just remove the Windows
2000 drive and reinstall XP on that other drive and it will be drive C
and all of the boot stuff will be taken care of. And if you plan on just
having XP on this machine, that is what I would do.

If having XP as drive F is okay, well then I can tell you how to fix it.
And with Windows 2000 drive still connected, go ahead and copy ntldr,
NTDETECT.COM, and boot.ini over to the XP drive. And with Notepad or
something, read in boot.ini and post it here. It will look something
like this, but yours will have both Windows 2000 and XP entries:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home
Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Then post back. Say do you have a DOS or a Windows 9x Startup floppy
disk around? Might need that for making a MBR (master boot record) if
you don't reinstall XP.

--
Bill
Windows XP SP2 (5.1.2600)
Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC

"BillW50" wrote in
:

In ,
BillW50 typed on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:25:48 -0500:
In ,
Boris typed on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:57:20 +0000 (UTC):
"BillW50" wrote in
:

In ,
Boris typed on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:24:22 +0000 (UTC):
I didn't know about this group until I did a 'get new groups' in
my news reader. Nice to see some familiar Dell faces here!

I've got a couple of old Gateways (P2 and P4) laying around that I
got from my dad. The P4 is an E4600, 1.6MHz, with 256MB of PC800
rambus, but I just ordered another 256MB for fun, Even with only
the current 256MB ram, it runs Win2K Pro just fine,

I've got a problem with the optical drives. D is an NEC CD-Rom,
and E is a Plextor CD/DVDR. Both are on the secondary IDE channel
with a new cable, D jumpered master, and E jumpered slave.


D will always read data cds, but only read audio cds about 30% of
the time.

E won't read data or audio cd at all. E always gives "The request
could not be performed because of an I/O device error". I've
tried setting this device to PIO only, but no luck.

I seem to remember this problem when my dad gave me the PC, but am
not certain.

Any suggestions on how to get D to always read audio cds, and E to
read anything?

Thanks.

1) Have you checked the Device Manager and make sure those devices
and others while you are at it all okay?

2) Disconnect one optical drive (no need to change any jumpers) and
see if it works now. Then disconnect that one and try the other one
alone.

3) Could be laser trouble. DVDs have two lasers as well. One for
CDs and one for DVDs. And lasers last about as long as light bulbs.
They can also flicker like bulbs as well and go intermittent.
Cleaning the lens might help, but I haven't had much luck there.

Others might have some other ideas. And you could try #2 again and
have each drive used alone using the master jumper and then the
slave jumper. That controller could have problems too. Maybe try
using the slave from the hard drive controller and see if that
helps any?

I first tried a known working CD-ROM that I had, and connected it to
the secondary IDE cable, by itself, jumpered as master, and it still
wouldn't play audio CDs, but would read data CDs. At this point,
forgetting to try moving the CD-ROM to the primary IDE channel, with
the OS hard drive, and jumper as slave, I decided to just install a
legitimate copy of WinXP Pro SP1 to another hard drive, saving the
original Win2K Pro, and then move the newly installed WinXP Pro to
the primary hard drive as my new OS. I thought this may solve the
CD problem, and I did want WinXP Pro rather than Win2K Pro, so I
could use newer versions of IE, etc. It did solve the CD problem,
but I discovered something else. Once the new WinXP Pro was
successfully installed, WinXP Pro would only boot in a dual boot
condition, when both hard drives were connected to the primary IDE
channel. And then, the system booted up giving me a choice of OS to
boot into, Win2K or WinXP Pro. Here's the details:

Before doing ANY work on this system, there was Win2K Pro (SP1)
installed on C (80GB WD), a floppy A, and a CD-ROM at D, and a DVD-R
at E. D always read data cds, intermittently read audio cds. E
would never read any cd/dvd. The system would never, ever boot from
CD, even with the BIOS set correctly. If the BIOS was set to boot
from CD, I always got 'insert boot disk in floppy A and hit any
key'. If I put a Win2K Pro boot floppy in A, it did boot up, asking
if I wanted CD support, etc. I'd say yes, and virtual ramdrive was
installed, but of course this wasn't the same as CD hardware
support, that is, I still couldn't boot from D.

I decided to connect a relatively new, very little used, 160GB WD as
a slave, on F, and install WinXP Pro SP1 on it, I connected the
drive, set the jumpers on both C and F, and restarted the machine.
Win2K Pro came up as usual, and I logged on to F to see some of the
data that was still on it from 3 years earlier. That's fine, I'm
going to delete it anyway when I install WinXP Pro on F. I put the
WinXP Pro CD in the CD-ROM D, and it autostarted and the Windows
install screen came up, and said something to the effect that I
couldn't install over Win2K Pro, would I like to do an advanced
installation. I said yes, and the CD automatically formatted F and
installed WinXP Pro to F. I didn't see it repartition F, though, or
make it active. This took about 20 minutes, with some interaction by
me. When done,
The WinXP Pro desktop appeared. XP was now on F, and Win2K still on
C. I tried an audio CD in CD-ROM D, and it worked every time. What
I surmised from this is that perhaps the secondary IDE channel
controller that runs when Win2K is operating, is not the proper one,
but deleting and reinstalling it when in Win 2K only installs the
same (incorrect?) one. Don't know, but the CD-ROM D works fine
under XP, but not Win2K.

With XP still on slave F, and Win2K still on master C, I restarted
the machine. I now got a dual boot selection screen, allowing me to
chose between the OS, WinXP Pro and Win2K Pro. I wasn't expecting
this. I was expecting only Win2K Pro to come up, since it was on
the master. Did the XP install create this dual boot loader?

I physically removed C (2K), and connected F (XP) as the master
(single) drive. I expected to boot right into XP, but nooooooo. I
got 'insert boot disk in floppy A and hit any key'. I thought, does
this drive's partition marked as active? I had to physically
connect C again as master, and move F to slave, boot into C (2K),
navigate to F, and use Disk Management to activate F. OK. I
physically removed C, and put F (XP) back in as master (single).
Still no luck, as I got the same message, 'insert boot disk in
floppy A and hit any key', when I restarted the machine.

The ONLY way I can get into WinXP Pro is by having BOTH hard drives
installed, and letting the dual boot menu come up, and selecting
WinXP Pro. When both are installed, it doesn't matter how they are
jumpered, slave or master, I get the dual boot menu. But, I do have
to have both installed in the machine.

If just the Win2K Pro hard drive is installed, Win2K comes up like
it always did.

If just the WinXP Pro hard drive is installed, I get 'insert boot
disk in floppy A and hit any key'.

I'd like to get WinXP Pro installed on this thing, somehow. I think
my next step is to make the XP floppy boot set, and try from there.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q310994

Ok, piece of cake. Hang on before you do anything. I've been here
before many times. I'm going to tell you what you need to do to get
XP bootable on its own. But don't do anything yet until I post how to
do it later. Feel free to do some reading though.

1) Copy ntldr and NTDETECT.com to the XP disk in the root folder.
2) Copy boot.ini to the XP disk in the root folder.
3) boot.ini will need to be edited with notepad or a text editor on
this XP drive.
4) You need a MBR on the XP drive.

And that is it. But I will go into details later.

Okay I am back. Okay we can fix this, but there is one thing you have
to decide. As the XP drive will be known to XP as drive F and not
drive C the way it was installed. If you can live with that, it should
be just fine. If you can't, there are utilities or a lot of registry
hacking to fix it. But doing either will take about just as long (or
longer) as reinstalling XP all over again.

So if you reinstall XP, no need to fix anything. Just remove the
Windows 2000 drive and reinstall XP on that other drive and it will be
drive C and all of the boot stuff will be taken care of. And if you
plan on just having XP on this machine, that is what I would do.

If having XP as drive F is okay, well then I can tell you how to fix
it. And with Windows 2000 drive still connected, go ahead and copy
ntldr, NTDETECT.COM, and boot.ini over to the XP drive. And with
Notepad or something, read in boot.ini and post it here. It will look
something like this, but yours will have both Windows 2000 and XP
entries:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home
Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Then post back. Say do you have a DOS or a Windows 9x Startup floppy
disk around? Might need that for making a MBR (master boot record) if
you don't reinstall XP.



Hi,

I only want to run XP, off of C, and I don't mind doing another install.
I don't care about Windows 2000. I do have lots of Windows 9x startup
floppies around. I used a 98SE startup floppy last night to try some
things, and I also have ntdetect, ntldr, etc, on floppy.

My problem is that even with a startup floppy, when it eventually wants
me to insert the XP cd into the CD-ROM, and I do, my CD-ROM then says
insert a floppy in A and press any key, instead of starting the XP
install.


I may try the 6 floppy startup set. If I could only get this thing to
boot from CD, but even with the BIOS set properly, it ends up looking to
A. Hmmmmm...???

In ,
Boris typed on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:53:56 +0000 (UTC):
Hi,

I only want to run XP, off of C, and I don't mind doing another
install. I don't care about Windows 2000. I do have lots of Windows
9x startup floppies around. I used a 98SE startup floppy last night
to try some things, and I also have ntdetect, ntldr, etc, on floppy.

My problem is that even with a startup floppy, when it eventually
wants me to insert the XP cd into the CD-ROM, and I do, my CD-ROM
then says insert a floppy in A and press any key, instead of starting
the XP install.

I may try the 6 floppy startup set. If I could only get this thing to
boot from CD, but even with the BIOS set properly, it ends up looking
to A. Hmmmmm...???

Okay no problem. Delete all files and folders on the XP drive. Or format
it would be far quicker (use FAT32 so DOS can see it, you can convert to
NTFS later if you want). Still with the Windows 2000 hard drive
installed, copy the i386 folder from the XP install CD to the XP drive.
So that is all is on there now, right? Remove the CD and you don't need
it anymore.

Power down and remove the Windows 2000 drive. Setup the XP drive as
master and change the cable.

Now bootup one of those Windows 98 Startup disks. Log on to the C drive
and cd (change directory) over to the i386 folder. Now run ntwin and XP
will install. This method works without the XP CD. Once XP is up and
running, delete this i386 folder.

Now you should be all set except for all of the drivers like sound card,
video, modem, etc. Usually the manufactures website is the place to get
those. They might not have XP drivers though. So this might be a little
tricky. But Windows 2000 drivers usually works for XP too and you got
that up and running. So that is a good sign. vbg

--
Bill
Windows XP SP2 (5.1.2600)
Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC

"BillW50" wrote in
:

In ,
Boris typed on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:53:56 +0000 (UTC):
Hi,

I only want to run XP, off of C, and I don't mind doing another
install. I don't care about Windows 2000. I do have lots of Windows
9x startup floppies around. I used a 98SE startup floppy last night
to try some things, and I also have ntdetect, ntldr, etc, on floppy.

My problem is that even with a startup floppy, when it eventually
wants me to insert the XP cd into the CD-ROM, and I do, my CD-ROM
then says insert a floppy in A and press any key, instead of starting
the XP install.

I may try the 6 floppy startup set. If I could only get this thing
to boot from CD, but even with the BIOS set properly, it ends up
looking to A. Hmmmmm...???

Okay no problem. Delete all files and folders on the XP drive. Or
format it would be far quicker (use FAT32 so DOS can see it, you can
convert to NTFS later if you want). Still with the Windows 2000 hard
drive installed, copy the i386 folder from the XP install CD to the XP
drive. So that is all is on there now, right? Remove the CD and you
don't need it anymore.

Power down and remove the Windows 2000 drive. Setup the XP drive as
master and change the cable.

Now bootup one of those Windows 98 Startup disks. Log on to the C
drive and cd (change directory) over to the i386 folder. Now run ntwin
and XP will install. This method works without the XP CD. Once XP is
up and running, delete this i386 folder.

Now you should be all set except for all of the drivers like sound
card, video, modem, etc. Usually the manufactures website is the place
to get those. They might not have XP drivers though. So this might be
a little tricky. But Windows 2000 drivers usually works for XP too and
you got that up and running. So that is a good sign. vbg


I'm going to try this tonight when I get home. Your instructions are
very clear.

I assume that right now I've got a dual boot loader on the XP drive, but
no MBR for this drive and the XP install did not make it an active
partition, while the Win2K still has it's original boot loader, and MBR.

I'll format the XP drive FAT32. When I get to installing XP from the
i386 folder by running ntwin, I guess this is where I can change to NTFS
when I'm asked to format. Will this partition automatically be marked
as active, since it's the only one on the machine with and OS?

Thanks again.

In ,
Boris typed on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:20:25 +0000 (UTC):
"BillW50" wrote in
:

In ,
Boris typed on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:53:56 +0000 (UTC):
Hi,

I only want to run XP, off of C, and I don't mind doing another
install. I don't care about Windows 2000. I do have lots of Windows
9x startup floppies around. I used a 98SE startup floppy last night
to try some things, and I also have ntdetect, ntldr, etc, on floppy.

My problem is that even with a startup floppy, when it eventually
wants me to insert the XP cd into the CD-ROM, and I do, my CD-ROM
then says insert a floppy in A and press any key, instead of
starting the XP install.

I may try the 6 floppy startup set. If I could only get this thing
to boot from CD, but even with the BIOS set properly, it ends up
looking to A. Hmmmmm...???

Okay no problem. Delete all files and folders on the XP drive. Or
format it would be far quicker (use FAT32 so DOS can see it, you can
convert to NTFS later if you want). Still with the Windows 2000 hard
drive installed, copy the i386 folder from the XP install CD to the
XP drive. So that is all is on there now, right? Remove the CD and
you don't need it anymore.

Power down and remove the Windows 2000 drive. Setup the XP drive as
master and change the cable.

Now bootup one of those Windows 98 Startup disks. Log on to the C
drive and cd (change directory) over to the i386 folder. Now run
ntwin and XP will install. This method works without the XP CD. Once
XP is up and running, delete this i386 folder.

Now you should be all set except for all of the drivers like sound
card, video, modem, etc. Usually the manufactures website is the
place to get those. They might not have XP drivers though. So this
might be a little tricky. But Windows 2000 drivers usually works for
XP too and you got that up and running. So that is a good sign. vbg


I'm going to try this tonight when I get home. Your instructions are
very clear.

Sounds good.

I assume that right now I've got a dual boot loader on the XP drive,
but no MBR for this drive and the XP install did not make it an active
partition, while the Win2K still has it's original boot loader, and
MBR.

I'm thinking that the Windows 2000 drive has the MBR and loader. While
the XP drive just has XP and that is all. The XP drive could be active,
but a reinstall as the only drive would make it so anyway.

I'll format the XP drive FAT32. When I get to installing XP from the
i386 folder by running ntwin, I guess this is where I can change to
NTFS when I'm asked to format.

I'm thinking that formatting it to NTFS won't work since the install
files are on this drive too. But you can convert to NTFS much later
anyway.

The problem is your CD drive can't boot. Thus why you are copying the
i386 folder over to the hard drive. If you can see the CD after booting
with a Windows 98 Startup disk, you don't need to copy the i386 folder
over. Just run ntwin from there. That should work if you can see it.
Then you can format the drive as NTFS now as you need nothing off of the
XP drive now.

Will this partition automatically be marked as active, since it's the
only one on the machine with and OS?

Thanks again.

Yes, a reinstall with this drive the only one will take care of this and
everything else.

--
Bill
Windows XP SP2 (5.1.2600)
Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC