J
J. P. Gilliver (John)
In message , Sysu
writes:
>Thanks for the sound advice T. I finally figured out what I was doing wrong.
>I needed to update my Bios from A00 to A05 at Dell drivers and downloads
>site. Also, I was not using the arrows and spacebar correctly to make
>adjustments and hit F1 to help understand what they did.omg
>
> Then went to the manufacturer's website (Samsung) for more info on the
>drivers and device since the drivers installed but device itself was not
>recognized by Windows at startup (code 41). They did have an 'Upgrade' for my
>DVD/CDROM Samsung CD-R/RW SW-248F that I did not find on Windows or
>Microsoft forums/driver info.
>
>Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd Voila...it is working!
Glad you got it working! (And that we stopped you buying a new computer!
The manufacturers love that, and of course promote it as the solution to
all problems!)
I suspect you didn't need the upgrade, but installing it set all the
settings back to the defaults, which is probably "auto". Anyway, if it
is working, you've got the benefit of whatever the upgrade implemented
(at a guess, support for larger discs than were imagined when version
A00 was created).
>
>OH, In the "Find" box I typed Cd-Rw 248F. There is a drop down menu as you
>type. They have the manuals for download too. It is FREE! The upgrade and
>manual.
Yes, many manufacturers provide manuals online for free. (In some cases,
you _don't_ get them with the device [or only get them on a CD] that
way they can save the cost of printing them! [Oh, and save the planet
too - but I'm sure that's not their primary concern.])
[]
A few more points just for interest that have come up in the discussion,
in no particular order:
One thought that occurred to me (turns out not to have been the case,
but I'll mention it anyway) was that maybe the secondary/slave IDE
channel cable had just become unplugged. (IDE channels support two
drives - primary and secondary [connected to the same cable, usually
distinguished by a link on the drive] most except _very_ old
motherboards have two IDE channels, thus up to four drives. IDE devices
are usually hard drives and optical [CD/DVD] drives.)
Microsoft were not completely daft when they told you you might need the
boot floppy and still need the CD: some older motherboards can _access_
CDs, but not _boot from_ them. If you had such a motherboard, you'd need
to boot from the floppy, then it would switch to the CD. (XP was never
distributed on floppies - I think '95 first edition was the last that
was.) That (having a floppy you could boot from) wouldn't have helped if
the CD drive was actually turned off in the BIOS, as yours seems to have
become. I would also echo the other poster's slight concern that it
might still be possible to format the HD from the booting floppy (or
floppy/CD combination), and thus lose everything, so don't mess with
those options until you're sure what you're doing.
You said you didn't know about SATA drives: well, as it turns out you
don't have them anyway (your motherboard may not support them). IDE
drives, or as they have been for some time EIDE (enhanced), connect to
the motherboard over an IDE ribbon cable, 40 conductors carrying many
signals in parallel (not 40, many of them are earth). This is also
called the ATA interface - now back-named to PATA, to distinguish it
from SATA, serial ATA - which sends the signals one-after-the-other but
very fast, over a much smaller number of conductors (about 4 I think),
which makes for a thinner cable and smaller connectors (there are _some_
technical advantages too). Most modern _larger_ drives are SATA not IDE
(the name PATA hasn't really caught on, as EIDE didn't really), and you
can even get CD/DVD drives with SATA interfaces. [This is a gross
simplification - see Wikipedia PATA and many other sources if you're
interested.]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/
writes:
>Thanks for the sound advice T. I finally figured out what I was doing wrong.
>I needed to update my Bios from A00 to A05 at Dell drivers and downloads
>site. Also, I was not using the arrows and spacebar correctly to make
>adjustments and hit F1 to help understand what they did.omg
>
> Then went to the manufacturer's website (Samsung) for more info on the
>drivers and device since the drivers installed but device itself was not
>recognized by Windows at startup (code 41). They did have an 'Upgrade' for my
>DVD/CDROM Samsung CD-R/RW SW-248F that I did not find on Windows or
>Microsoft forums/driver info.
>
>Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd Voila...it is working!
Glad you got it working! (And that we stopped you buying a new computer!
The manufacturers love that, and of course promote it as the solution to
all problems!)
I suspect you didn't need the upgrade, but installing it set all the
settings back to the defaults, which is probably "auto". Anyway, if it
is working, you've got the benefit of whatever the upgrade implemented
(at a guess, support for larger discs than were imagined when version
A00 was created).
>
>OH, In the "Find" box I typed Cd-Rw 248F. There is a drop down menu as you
>type. They have the manuals for download too. It is FREE! The upgrade and
>manual.
Yes, many manufacturers provide manuals online for free. (In some cases,
you _don't_ get them with the device [or only get them on a CD] that
way they can save the cost of printing them! [Oh, and save the planet
too - but I'm sure that's not their primary concern.])
[]
A few more points just for interest that have come up in the discussion,
in no particular order:
One thought that occurred to me (turns out not to have been the case,
but I'll mention it anyway) was that maybe the secondary/slave IDE
channel cable had just become unplugged. (IDE channels support two
drives - primary and secondary [connected to the same cable, usually
distinguished by a link on the drive] most except _very_ old
motherboards have two IDE channels, thus up to four drives. IDE devices
are usually hard drives and optical [CD/DVD] drives.)
Microsoft were not completely daft when they told you you might need the
boot floppy and still need the CD: some older motherboards can _access_
CDs, but not _boot from_ them. If you had such a motherboard, you'd need
to boot from the floppy, then it would switch to the CD. (XP was never
distributed on floppies - I think '95 first edition was the last that
was.) That (having a floppy you could boot from) wouldn't have helped if
the CD drive was actually turned off in the BIOS, as yours seems to have
become. I would also echo the other poster's slight concern that it
might still be possible to format the HD from the booting floppy (or
floppy/CD combination), and thus lose everything, so don't mess with
those options until you're sure what you're doing.
You said you didn't know about SATA drives: well, as it turns out you
don't have them anyway (your motherboard may not support them). IDE
drives, or as they have been for some time EIDE (enhanced), connect to
the motherboard over an IDE ribbon cable, 40 conductors carrying many
signals in parallel (not 40, many of them are earth). This is also
called the ATA interface - now back-named to PATA, to distinguish it
from SATA, serial ATA - which sends the signals one-after-the-other but
very fast, over a much smaller number of conductors (about 4 I think),
which makes for a thinner cable and smaller connectors (there are _some_
technical advantages too). Most modern _larger_ drives are SATA not IDE
(the name PATA hasn't really caught on, as EIDE didn't really), and you
can even get CD/DVD drives with SATA interfaces. [This is a gross
simplification - see Wikipedia PATA and many other sources if you're
interested.]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/