On my computer at home (which is not hooked up to the internet), a problem developed in the last week. Every time I put a non-audio CD into the drive, it reboots (and keeps rebooting for as long as the disk is in the drive).
'm running Windows 98SE, if that’s important. If there’s any other information anyone might need, let me know.
I tried running my Dell Diagnostics CD after booting up from a boot disk, but that, predictably, resulted in the CD restarting the computer once I ran the program. Short of reformatting the hard drive (which I know I’d screw up), any suggestions?
I had something like this happen a few months ago, all of a sudden putting a blank CD into my burner caused a reboot.
Problem turned out to be the drivers for the mobo chipset. In my case it’s an nVidia nForce 2 chipset and I had to get the latest drivers from nVidia’s website.
Check Dell’s website and also check the site for the motherboard and/or chipset manufacturer, see if they address this problem.
I’m assuming that this suddenly began happening after a period of normal operation? Have you installed anything new in that time, such as updates from MS’ website?
Really, that’s the first thing that I’m going to try out - one of the IT people at work recommended that. I do that through startup, right?
Valgard, this computer isn’t hooked up to the internet, so I’m not sure what to say.
I tried installing a SanDisk upgrade so I could run a 2.0 USB thumb drive (Win 98SE only supports 1.0 USB). It was supposed to fix the problem, but I’ve seen on this board that doesn’t work (and it didn’t). I also installed a “new” modem, but the problem in question was manifesting before this happened*.
*I should note that I *can * get a CD to occassionally run, but that only about once every 200 times I make an attempt. I can’t imagine a 0.5% success rate is normal.
After several hours talking with Dell support, I think I’ve isolated the problem. We dirty installed the OS (98SE), we checked registries, we tried to system restore for every date available in the last month, we worked in DOS, we deleted drivers, we danced around in our underwear swearing at the moon.
Three support technicians later, I ripped the CD-ROM drive out of the computer, took it to work, and had them test it on a different computer. Bingo - the problem seems to reside within the driver. I just picked up an identical model on eBay for $15, so we’ll see how that goes (work wouldn’t give me a spare ROM drive to test at home).