Do you have MSCDEX installed?
Then make sure to use the /L parameter to assign the DOS drive[r] mapped to another letter, so the DOS driver does not interfere with the Windows driver.

retardware wrote:

Do you have MSCDEX installed?
Then make sure to use the /L parameter to assign the DOS drive[r] mapped to another letter, so the DOS driver does not interfere with the Windows driver.

No. What is MSCDEX?

mothergoose729 wrote:

What is MSCDEX?

Sigh.
Maybe post your config.sys and autoexec.bat in "code" blocks.

mothergoose729 wrote:

Yamaha YMF744 PCI (new addition)

Since this is the only thing that's changed recently, it is the prime suspect.

I'm thinking IRQ conflict. Try removing the sound card. If that solves it, then try force assigning a different IRQ to the sound card or putting it in a different PCI slot.

It would make sense (kind of...) that the drive works while you're not using the sound card (i.e. while just browsing around the drive in Windows or installing games) but when you launch a game, it tries to simultaneously use the sound card and the CD drive, so it fails due to the conflict.

retardware wrote:

mothergoose729 wrote:

What is MSCDEX?

Sigh.
Maybe post your config.sys and autoexec.bat in "code" blocks.

Are these files in the root of my c drive? If so both files are completely empty. Is it a configuration issue?

einr wrote:

Since this is the only thing that's changed recently, it is the prime suspect. […]
Show full quote

mothergoose729 wrote:

Yamaha YMF744 PCI (new addition)

Since this is the only thing that's changed recently, it is the prime suspect.

I'm thinking IRQ conflict. Try removing the sound card. If that solves it, then try force assigning a different IRQ to the sound card or putting it in a different PCI slot.

It would make sense (kind of...) that the drive works while you're not using the sound card (i.e. while just browsing around the drive in Windows or installing games) but when you launch a game, it tries to simultaneously use the sound card and the CD drive, so it fails due to the conflict.

I removed both of my PCI sound cards, set IRQ 3-15 to reserved, enabled plug and play OS, reset the bios a few times, nothing I do seems to have an effect. This definitely worked at one time, so it is either

mothergoose729 wrote:

retardware wrote:

mothergoose729 wrote:

What is MSCDEX?

Sigh.
Maybe post your config.sys and autoexec.bat in "code" blocks.

Are these files in the root of my c drive? If so both files are completely empty. Is it a configuration issue?

I'd say to the least it is highly unusual if both files are empty.
Why? What purged their contents? I guess that is what is wrong.
(Or maybe you have some option in Windows Explorer set to not show system files etc... dunno... the first thing I do after Windows installations is to reverse practically all display options in Explorer...)

What does appear in these files when you click Start -> Execute -> and write in the program name field "sysedit" and execute that?

mothergoose729 wrote:

What is MSCDEX?

DOS CD-ROM driver.

The lack of which should not affect the ability to run stuff from within Windows, AFAIK.

yawetaG wrote:

mothergoose729 wrote:

What is MSCDEX?

DOS CD-ROM driver.

The lack of which should not affect the ability to run stuff from within Windows, AFAIK.

Indeed, none of my Win9x installs even have Autoexec.bat/Config.sys files.

Are the 2 connected on the same cable and if so are they jumped as Primary and Slave or cable select?
Although good to check it should either work or not, conflict seems more likely.

Personally I don't like using my discs, No-CD cracks or daemon tools lite 3.47 and a large HDD are your friends 😀

My autoexec.bat and config.sys files are indeed empty. They are 0kb in size and when I edit them with notepad nothing is inside them. I am using a retail copy of windows 98, with only my Nvidia VGA drivers installed. I have also tried updating to the unofficial SP3 patch and enabling DMA and those haven't fixed the issue either (although I increased my SSD performance by 10x, so that was nice).

My DVD drive is on a separate channel than my hard drisk (as they were when it was working). I suppose I could try a new IDE cable just to be extra-super-duper sure. I have tried setting the DVD drive as a master and a slave and neither seems to work better.

I need the original discs because of games with redbook audio and those that stream music off the disk, like Quake II. If there is a reliable way to mount disks and get audio out of them, in windows and DOS, then I would be happy to chuck out my CD Drive, but I haven't found a good method yet.

Right now I am considering buying a new motherboard, but I really, really don't want to do that 🙁.

Well, with autoexec.bat and config.sys empty you have an unconfigured DOS, even after exiting windows to DOS or opening a dosbox window.
So obviously a lot of things won't work.
All versions of Windows 4 rely on a correctly configured DOS environment. Some parts/functions of it will work without, but not all. This is the reason why the Windows installer always creates a default config.sys, autoexec.bat and msdos.sys.

The question remains: what caused the both files being truncated to zero length?
My gut feeling says some buggy installer opened them for writing and then failed, leaving the configuration files truncated/empty and your computer only working partially.

You should make regular backups of the system configuration files for exactly this purpose.
My retro Win98SE machine is currently half-disassembled because of some tests I did recently. If you want I'll post the config files (autoexec.bat, config.sys, msdos.sys) tomorrow, so you can do the changes to match your individual system and see if the CD access problem still remains.

ah redbook, yeh that does complicate things. You can get cd audio with daemon tools but need WDM drivers. I'm a EAX kinda guy so I'm screwed as well.

So its a clean install + SP3 with with all cards pulled out accept video? In which case it cant be the sound card conflicting.
Yeh guess you could try another IDE, Personally I don't like SP3 and prefer to keep things as simple or "stock" as possible, but again it shouldn't really matter.

retardware wrote:

Well, with autoexec.bat and config.sys empty you have an unconfigured DOS, even after exiting windows to DOS or opening a dosbox window.

But OP isn't doing this, he is playing Windows games. Admittedly I have 1 game (Megarace?) that requires mscdex loaded, but no actual drive configured, maybe OP has a similar dos game that DOES require dos drive configured but definitely not windows games s Cand the vast majority do work just using native window drivers when in windows.

retardware wrote:

The question remains: what caused the both files being truncated to zero length?

Question to OP? when you say edit do you mean you enter some text, and it deletes it, or just that its empty?
If its empty then 0 filesize is normal. but if your entering lines and its not saving them or overriding them with every reboot this is NOT normal and as retardware says indicates something is trying to install/change the system and screwing something up

chinny22 wrote:

ah redbook, yeh that does complicate things. You can get cd audio with daemon tools but need WDM drivers. I'm a EAX kinda guy so I'm screwed as well.

So its a clean install + SP3 with with all cards pulled out accept video? In which case it cant be the sound card conflicting.
Yeh guess you could try another IDE, Personally I don't like SP3 and prefer to keep things as simple or "stock" as possible, but again it shouldn't really matter.

Is SP3 this "unofficial service pack"? This should be avoided indeed, it does mix up plenty things.

To get Windows 98 updated completely, I'd suggest the official Microsoft update CD. It works well and does not break anything.

retardware wrote:

chinny22 wrote:

ah redbook, yeh that does complicate things. You can get cd audio with daemon tools but need WDM drivers. I'm a EAX kinda guy so I'm screwed as well.

So its a clean install + SP3 with with all cards pulled out accept video? In which case it cant be the sound card conflicting.
Yeh guess you could try another IDE, Personally I don't like SP3 and prefer to keep things as simple or "stock" as possible, but again it shouldn't really matter.

Is SP3 this "unofficial service pack"? This should be avoided indeed, it does mix up plenty things.

To get Windows 98 updated completely, I'd suggest the official Microsoft update CD. It works well and does not break anything.

I don't install it as a normal do course, but I gave it a shot in the hopes that it would fix things, and it did not 😒 .

retardware wrote:

You should make regular backups of the system configuration files for exactly this purpose.
My retro Win98SE machine is currently half-disassembled because of some tests I did recently. If you want I'll post the config files (autoexec.bat, config.sys, msdos.sys) tomorrow, so you can do the changes to match your individual system and see if the CD access problem still remains.

I would be very grateful for that. I am beggining to suspect a hardware problem at this point... but it will be useful anyways, because I do have another computer that I want to run in pure DOS mode from 98.

chinny22 wrote:

ah redbook, yeh that does complicate things. You can get cd audio with daemon tools but need WDM drivers. I'm a EAX kinda guy so […]
Show full quote

ah redbook, yeh that does complicate things. You can get cd audio with daemon tools but need WDM drivers. I'm a EAX kinda guy so I'm screwed as well.

So its a clean install + SP3 with with all cards pulled out accept video? In which case it cant be the sound card conflicting.
Yeh guess you could try another IDE, Personally I don't like SP3 and prefer to keep things as simple or "stock" as possible, but again it shouldn't really matter.

retardware wrote:

Well, with autoexec.bat and config.sys empty you have an unconfigured DOS, even after exiting windows to DOS or opening a dosbox window.

But OP isn't doing this, he is playing Windows games. Admittedly I have 1 game (Megarace?) that requires mscdex loaded, but no actual drive configured, maybe OP has a similar dos game that DOES require dos drive configured but definitely not windows games s Cand the vast majority do work just using native window drivers when in windows.

retardware wrote:

The question remains: what caused the both files being truncated to zero length?

Question to OP? when you say edit do you mean you enter some text, and it deletes it, or just that its empty?
If its empty then 0 filesize is normal. but if your entering lines and its not saving them or overriding them with every reboot this is NOT normal and as retardware says indicates something is trying to install/change the system and screwing something up

It is a clean install with no SP3 initially, but I tried that as well. The only things installed are my GPU, with no PCI cards in at all. No drivers except the VGA drivers (Nvidia 56.63) and the nsusb driver. I chose the "typical" option during installation.

The files are 0kb in size, when I edit them in notepad there is no text. I haven't tried to save anything to these files.

Some of the games I am trying to run are DOS games running in a DOS window, but Carmageddon II is a windows game and it fails the disk check as well. For this computer, I am not trying to reinstart in dos mode, just double click from an icon launcher from within windows.

Maybe you should try to do a "Custom" installation?
I always find preconfigured DOS startup files when I do so.

(On the other hand, I usually prepare my computers without Windows, install that only after basic DOS is done.
There are a few switches in msdos.sys that massively influence Windows 9x behaviour, I also configure this even before Windows installation, and after installation I correct what Windows changed there.)

retardware wrote:

Maybe you should try to do a "Custom" installation? I always find preconfigured DOS startup files when I do so. […]
Show full quote

Maybe you should try to do a "Custom" installation?
I always find preconfigured DOS startup files when I do so.

(On the other hand, I usually prepare my computers without Windows, install that only after basic DOS is done.
There are a few switches in msdos.sys that massively influence Windows 9x behaviour, I also configure this even before Windows installation, and after installation I correct what Windows changed there.)

I will obediently follow any instructions you give me 😀. I am not fluent in DOS yet, so at the moment all I have done is the standard method for installing stuff.

Maybe the easiest way would be to do a full install (including all multimedia options - not all of them are included in a "typical" install! - to make sure there is no missing stuff) first.
(Before doing so, delete the old Windows installation!)

After the install, go to Windows Explorer, make msdos.sys visible (it is normally hidden, change using the files' properties dialog) and copy the configuration files into a backup directory (to have not to restart from scratch if some installer botches them).
Then report back what you got (maybe copy the files' content into some

1 format blocks using the vogons' full editor mode).

mothergoose729 wrote:

Some of the games I am trying to run are DOS games running in a DOS window, but Carmageddon II is a windows game and it fails the disk check as well. For this computer, I am not trying to reinstart in dos mode, just double click from an icon launcher from within windows.

Running games in a DOS window (also known as Command Prompt - not Dosbox, which is a DOS emulator) as well as running DOS games by double-clicking the executable from within Win9x does not require DOS drivers at all, usually. The games' driver requirements will be routed via the Windows drivers. That includes the CD-ROM drive.

It's much more likely to be caused by a hardware or resource allocation issue than by missing DOS drivers.

chinny22 wrote:

retardware wrote:

The question remains: what caused the both files being truncated to zero length?

Question to OP? when you say edit do you mean you enter some text, and it deletes it, or just that its empty?
If its empty then 0 filesize is normal. but if your entering lines and its not saving them or overriding them with every reboot this is NOT normal and as retardware says indicates something is trying to install/change the system and screwing something up

Or something is blocking him from saving the configuration files, e.g. the files are read-only or are located in a protected folder. Some anti-viri also do this.
Also check whether there aren't multiple copies of the files - if one copy is a shadow version of another file (that is empty), then he'll need to edit the original.