weird CD-RW drive

[PDL]

Me thinks maybe me has a bad CD-RW drive.
This started out being an apparent problem with an ATI video card and took an interesting turn. I could not get the system to work with an ATI rage 128 64meg AGP card.
The attempt was to see if a replacement card would work in my system.
I set the system up with a freshly formatted HDD and loaded Win98. The basic load gave me a standard VGA adapter. OK so far. Ran the install program for ATI enhanced drivers and it ran as expected. Tried to restart and it locked up. hit the reset button and got the error message that the display was not properly set up. So, go to reload the drivers and it goes as expected, but I get the same thing when I restart.
This is getting rediculous!!
Tried to uninstall with the OS but the list did not show that the ATI software was installed. So, I go to the CD and uninstall with that program and do a restart. Now I am back to the standard VGA again. Try the install again and ..... same problems.

Now, here is the real kicker!!

It seems to come down to a problem with the Plextor Plexwriter12/10/32A CD-RW drive.

What??? ... you say....
You think I'm wrong? You come up with a better answer.
Well, here is what I finally did.

I was using the Plextor as the drive to install the OS. It took a lonnnnng time. After it was done, everything looked fine. But it would not allow me to load the ATI software or change the video settings. Repeated restarts and all. What was odd was that when I tried to restart, it would just shut down the system. That had never happened to me before. Also, it would not recognize the regular CD-Rom drive which the BIOS did recognize.
So, I decided to switch the setup so that the other cd-rom, the $18 refurbed pullout, was the recognized drive.
Reinstalled the OS and it took less than half the time. Did a restart and almost everything is the way it is supposed to be and works like it is suppose to work. However, the system still will not recognize the Plextor drive. I'll work on that later!!

Now, could it be that the Plextor loaded the OS but corrupted a bunch of files in the process and caused it to be unstable??

Now I am wondering if a lot of the problems I have had lately may be because I used the Plextor drive to install the OS previously.
I know that when I tried to install the ATI software over top of the Diamond Stealth III software, I used the Plextor drive. So, that may have been the problem.
That's a project for tomorrow.

[dugans]

Sometimes installing a video driver over another one causes trouble, especially with fancier, faster cards. You could try uninstalling the old and go to the generic FIRST, then reboot.
After that try installing the ATI drivers.

Might help, might not: I usually don't bother, but it is the first thing I try if new video drivers don't take and it hasn't failed me yet- except with one bad video card.

[PDL]

OK, here’s the latest development. It’s long but my posts seem to be that way these days.
As a reminder, the root of this problem is still looking as though the CD-Rom drive that I have been using is defective. It seems to be working fine by running software without reporting errors, but seemingly not doing a thorough job..
This post has a 2-fold purpose. It gives you folks an account of my trials and troubles so that you may benefit from the solutions, where there is one. And, I have a record of them and your responses, which I very much appreciate.
Since the ATI card worked fine with the newly installed OS and continued to work for about an hour, I decided to try to get it working on the original system.
I put the Diamond card back in, this is the one that was working fine, and set up the original HDD with the original system. Booted fine and loaded the OS. Deleted the software for the Diamond and set the video adapter to standard PCI VGA.
Restarted and got the standard setup…yuck!
Now, shut down and install the ATI card, restart and get the yuck standard video. So far so good.
Ran the ATI driver software and all went as it should until it tried to restart. Now it gives me an error
message saying there is a “Windows protection error” and I must restart the system. OK, I try that and it goes into the SAFE MODE startup. Checked the driver software and everything is as it should be.
Do a restart and get the protection error again.
NOW what????
Tried again and got the same so when it again went into the SAFE MODE, I reset it back to the standard VGA and shut down. Switched back to the Diamond card and restarted. Got into Win98 fine with the standard video. Installed the drivers for the Diamond and restarted. ALL IS FINE!!
Mind you now that I was unable to ‘uninstall” the software for the ATI card, but that shouldn’t matter.
What seems to have happened is that there is SOMETHING that is wrong with the OS that prevents the ATI card from working but that doesn’t effect the Diamond card!!!
I hate these kind of problems. They are the ones that are not an obvious cause and effect situation.
Apparently, I will need to either reinstall the OS using the good CD-Rom drive and if that doesn’t work, to do a “FROM-SCRATCH” reinstall. Not my favorite thing to do!!!

What ya think rogerdugans????