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CD-ROM Drive Not Accessible Win 9x/Me
Last updated: 5/31//01

Q.  My computer says D: is not accessible. D: is my CD-ROM drive. I just started having this problem.  The D: drive is in Start, Control Panel, System, Device Manager, but there is a yellow quotation mark on the CD controller. How do I fix this problem?

A.  You may have a bad CR-ROM drive. I am assuming you have an IDE CD-ROM and hard disk... First, check and be sure the cables are fully plugged-in--push on them. If the CD-ROM is connected to its own flat cable, which plugs into the motherboard secondary IDE interface (which is the way it should be installed), the cable should be plugged into the motherboard with the red stripe towards pin 1 and into the drive with the red stripe towards the power connector. If the CD-ROM is on the same cable as your hard disk it should be jumpered as a slave and the hard disk jumpered as a master (and with a slave present, if there is such a setting).  Be sure the CMOS Setup does not have the drive for which the CD-ROM is configured disabled. Try removing the driver in the System Manager and restarting Windows. If it's an old drive, press the F8 key just as windows starts to boot to get the Startup Menu; choose Command Prompt Only; type edit autoexec.bat; find the line that starts with "rem - By Windows Setup - " (in front of the line with the MSCEDX command); move your cursor to the C (the start of C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX...) following the dash after "...Setup -" ; press the Enter key to put "rem - By Windows Setup - " on a seperate line so "C:\WINDOWS...: starts on the next line; hold the Alt key and press F to get the File menu; choose exit; Save and Exit; reboot. If that doesn't fix it you probably have a bad CD-ROM. Cleaning by a repair shop may fix, but it usually does not.

FAQs: CD-ROM, CD-RW, and DVD Drives Index