Computer will not recognise optical drive

[Ozpete]

Hi again, Raymond and all!

A friend has just bought a new computer but has some files on his old Acer Inspire running Windows 98 that he wants on his new computer. He bought a Toshiba Flash drive, only to find it is not compatible with Windows 98. He asked for help. I took along and popped in a spare DVD burner (taking care to fix jumper settings). Device Manager lists the drive OK, advises no new drivers are needed and reports "This device is working properly". But when My Computer is opened and D: drive is selected, the message is "Device Not Available". Can you advise why Device Manager finds it but My Computer does not list it?

(By the way, I tried to get into BIOS to see if some setting there was causing this, but cannot access BIOS. Even though I press Delete continually, BIOS appears for a split second, then Windows boots. The other way to overcome the problem could be to remove his old HDD, put it in my computer as slave and copy files to Optical or flash drive this way. I assume my computer would recognise this "foreign" HDD if connected as slave??

Thanks again for your help. Pete.

[Raymond]

Most probably you'll need to get in the BIOS to check on the DVD burner drive. Let it auto detect.
If you can't get in bios, the easier way would be using either UBCD or linux live CD to boot up the computer.

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/...indows-to-ftp/
http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/...linux-live-cd/

This way you don't need to take out the hard drive and fix it on another computer. But since the the computer running win98 might be a little old, I'd prefer to just take it out and plug it to another computer as slave.

[Lenogris]

ya plugging the hard drive into another computer then getting the files from it there would be the most simple way

[Ozpete]

Thanks Raymond and Lenogris. Since my initial post, I checked the Acer website to find the usual way to access BIOS is Control/Alt/Escape. However I will call in to my friend's house tomorrow, take the HDD out of his old computer and do the file-transfers on my computer. I'll let you know how it works out. Thanks again. Pete.

(Some hours later) My friend phoned me, I instructed him on the removal of his HDD which he delivered to me. Within 15 minutes, I had the HDD on my computer and all the required filed saved to his flash drive. We are all happy! Thanks again.