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Dec 19, 2001, 1:25am

regarding to my CD-ROM problem, it works again.
the CD-ROM creators finnaly emailed me back.
Anyway they gave me this info. Try it you will be supprized, I was.
ghost drives, my computer was hunted lol


Remove any "ghost drives" in safe mode (95/98/ME/2000)
During the cold boot up process, tap the f8 key until you see the microsoft
startup menu. Choose option 3 and hit enter(SAFE MODE). When the desktop is
loaded up in safe mode, right click on my computer and go to properties.
Click on the device manager tab then click on the plus sign next to cd-rom.
When devices are removed they may remain in the memory. You can view these
"ghost drives" in safe mode. If you have several ghosts and are unsure which
listing is the one that is actually connected, remove all listings. Windows
will detect what is actually connected when you restart into normal mode.

Dec 19, 2001, 2:05am

Good for you that it works now :)
What I wonder is why it still did read that one CD... well you never know what wonders can happen with windows anyway :)

Fox Mc Cloud

"data21" <dbmiller at kiski.net> a écrit dans le message news: 3c2008a2 at server1.Activeworlds.com...
> regarding to my CD-ROM problem, it works again.
> the CD-ROM creators finnaly emailed me back.
> Anyway they gave me this info. Try it you will be supprized, I was.
> ghost drives, my computer was hunted lol
>
>
> Remove any "ghost drives" in safe mode (95/98/ME/2000)
> During the cold boot up process, tap the f8 key until you see the microsoft
> startup menu. Choose option 3 and hit enter(SAFE MODE). When the desktop is
> loaded up in safe mode, right click on my computer and go to properties.
> Click on the device manager tab then click on the plus sign next to cd-rom.
> When devices are removed they may remain in the memory. You can view these
> "ghost drives" in safe mode. If you have several ghosts and are unsure which
> listing is the one that is actually connected, remove all listings. Windows
> will detect what is actually connected when you restart into normal mode.
>
>
>

Dec 19, 2001, 7:04pm

Well, you learn somthing new every day. I just ran this check on all my
boxes and EVERY one of them had one of these ghosts for EVERY CDROM and most
newer hard drives (older ones all use generic drivers it seems) EVER
installed.

This also includes drives installed before a "dirty" reformat. A dirty
reformat consists of removing the Windows directory through the DOS deltree
command after preserving the c:/windows/desktop elsewhere, and then copying
the old desktop back over it the new one.

Apparently this is because the Windows registry was not removed (where the
PHARQ do they store it at? the MBR?) and the ghosted drives are cataloged
there.

Why it was done like this, I don't know. I'm just an over-intelligent sysop,
not a Microsoft programmer.

[Worthless junk follows]
Dirty formats are preferable in a multiple-system mission critical situation
because no essential data is lost (windows, naturally, because of it's
nature is not essential)
and it takes literally minutes as opposed to up to six hours to back up,
high level (or even better, low level) format, reinstall Windows, reinstall
the drivers, reconfigure the drivers, reinstall the software (since the
registry was lost it is NECCESSARY for a properly functioning system to
reinstall, not restore from backup unless registry entries were dumped),
restore files and restore any neccessary user info. It can also take a long
time to reestablish network functionality with a clean format (I'm unsure of
why this is, but Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2k and XP don't like to network with
NT4 as the login server)

[View Quote]

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