No CDROM in Win98 \ VOGONS

No CDROM in Win98

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First post, by Kouwes

Posted on 2026-03-28, 14:17

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Someone wanted to buy this 233MMX PC from me. It has an Amptron PM8600 mainboard with 32MB RAM, a 4.2GB HDD with two 2.1G partitions, a 24x Samsung CDROM drive, S3 Virge and some ESS 1688F soundcard.
I had DOS6.22 installed and everything was running fine but the buyer asked me to install a german version of Windows98SE.
That went well, until the point windows found the S3- and soundcard: I couldnt install the drivers from the Win98 CD because no cdrom drive found.
Although I obviously just installed Win98 from a cdrom.
When booting the PC you can see the cdrom drive listed by the way, so at least the BIOS knows it‘s there.
I installed the VIA 4in1 drivers (except AGP) but there‘s an exclamation mark at the secondary IDE controller.
Still, the cdrom drive showed up once in the win98 explorer but yeah, only once.
I have no idea why it won‘t work - any ideas?

Reply 1 of 8, by RetroPCCupboard

Posted on 2026-03-28, 19:14

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Did windows setup REM out the CD driver in autoexec.bat?

Reply 2 of 8, by Babasha

Posted on 2026-03-28, 19:32

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Are the HDD and CDROM on the same cable or not?
Is there IDE connector on ESS soundcard?

Need help? Begin with photo and model of your hardware 😉

Reply 3 of 8, by NeoG_

Posted on 2026-03-29, 00:22

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When going to properties for the IDE controller with an exclamation mark on it, what is the error message shown in the properties dialog box?

Windows setup will disable the 16-bit CDROM driver and move it to DOSSTART.BAT where it will load only when you select restart in MS-DOS mode from the shutdown menu. Inside windows it's supposed to be relying on the 32-bit storage drivers. If they fail to load then some IDE devices may be missing.

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Reply 4 of 8, by Kouwes

Posted on 2026-03-29, 14:15

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I booted into Win98 and the cdrom drive just worked. So I installed souddrivers from a cd -at least that was successful- and after reboot: no cdrom drive.
My guess: this board is a piece of junk.

Reply 5 of 8, by Babasha

Posted on 2026-03-29, 15:30

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Never get any troubles with Samsung/Creative 24x and 32x on this motherboard.

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Reply 6 of 8, by Fazeshift

Posted on 2026-03-30, 21:03

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Does the ESS soundcard have IDE? Where is the CD-ROM connected?

I bet this is due to a PnP resource conflict. Motherboards with dual-IDE + ISA soundcards with IDE are very difficult to get working correctly in Win9x. Even when the config works in DOS, once Windows tries to manage resources, things break. For example - conflict between MoBo secondary IDE and ISA soundcard IDE.

Reply 7 of 8, by leonardo

Posted on 2026-03-30, 21:21

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Kouwes wrote on 2026-03-29, 14:15:

I booted into Win98 and the cdrom drive just worked. So I installed souddrivers from a cd -at least that was successful- and after reboot: no cdrom drive.
My guess: this board is a piece of junk.

Fazeshift wrote on 2026-03-30, 21:03:

Does the ESS soundcard have IDE? Where is the CD-ROM connected?

I bet this is due to a PnP resource conflict. Motherboards with dual-IDE + ISA soundcards with IDE are very difficult to get working correctly in Win9x. Even when the config works in DOS, once Windows tries to manage resources, things break. For example - conflict between MoBo secondary IDE and ISA soundcard IDE.

^ What he said.

The reason you experienced the disappearance of the CD-ROM drive after you installed the sound card drivers is that it allowed Windows to then detect the associated IDE interface, and that probably now causes a resource conflict.

I bet all you have to do to bring your secondary IDE (and the CD-ROM drive) online, is to find the IDE interface enabled by the sound card, disable that in Device Manager, and Bob will be your uncle.

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 8 of 8, by ott

Posted on 2026-03-30, 21:35

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Kouwes wrote on 2026-03-28, 14:17:

I installed the VIA 4in1 drivers (except AGP) but there‘s an exclamation mark at the secondary IDE controller.

Some chipset drivers automatically enable the DMA mode in Disk/CD-ROM settings.
Maybe this is the problem?

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