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CD drive errors?
In short, this old computer refuses to boot from it's CD drive under almost any circumstances. I have tried it set up in various positions, slave/master to the hard drive. Master on both primary and secondary IDE channels, and alone on either channel.
If I attempt to boot directly from a cd (I've tried XP Pro, XP Home and Knoppix), I get a "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure" error, followed by a standard C:\> prompt.
If I then try and start up from a boot disk with CD support (I've tried two Win98 ones), it will let me switch to E:\ (my cd drive), but any command at an E: prompt results in a "CDR101: Not Ready Reading Drive E: - A/R/F".
The cd drive is recognized by the BIOS in whatever position I place it, but after the POST, the above occurs. I've tried messing with the boot order - no effect. I thought it might have been a faulty IDE cable, so I switched it out with 2 I know work - no effect. I also thought it might have been the drive (it is 3-4 years old), so I switched it with another one I know works, but I ended up with the same error(s).
Now I'm out of ideas as to what's wrong, I'm sure the cables are in correctly and the jumpers are fine, I don't know what else could be the culprit. I purchased the computer from my friend, and it's about 5 years old (200mhz/32mb of ram/2gb hdd), but these errors just started happening last summer sometime. My friend has no idea what he changed or anything that would have started causing them.
Thanks for any help.
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