As I mentioned in this post, I recieved a nice combo cd player/burner/DVD-Rom for Christmas, and for no apparent reason, decided to try and install it before I looked at the system requirements listed on the side of the box. The burner in question is the Mad Dog Dominator 4-in-1, which can be used by any computer running Windows 98 Second Edition or above. I’m running Windows 98. The computer recognizes that there’s something new and exciting plugged into it, but cannot locate the appropriate drivers to actually make the new, exciting thing work.
Undaunted, I went to the manufacturers website and tried to locate the drivers there. They do have drivers - they have drivers for the Dominator FX-5200, the Dominator MX4000 AGP and a whole host of other things. One of them could be my burner, but I can’t tell from the names. So I e-mailed tech support. They told me to go to the Microsoft homepage and run Windows Update. All the holes in my computer’s security have been fixed, which is nice, but doesn’t really solve my problem.
Computer-savvy Dopers, give me the truth. Is there any way I can download the proper drivers to make this thing work, or am I replacing my burner and/or my operating system? Also, is the malfunctioning burner the reason my sound card no longer functions, or did I unplug something I shouldn’t have?
Oh, and I heretofore swear to read the box three times before I install anything on my computer ever again, so I never, ever, ever install hardware my system is too archaic to recognize.
Most CD or DVD burners don’t need any “drivers”. Windows 98 regards it as a standard vanilla CD-or DVD ROM drive and it’s your burning software that actually recognizes it as a burner. Windows XP can (and usually does) recognize burners for what they are*; sometimes even when XP recognizes it incorrectly your burning software will see it as such and work flawlessly.
The only burners that need drivers (typically) are USB or Firewire drives. Is this such a model?
** = Windows XP typically recognizes a burner as a generic CD\DVD drive until the first time you put a blank disc in it, after which it remembers that your drive is a burner and recognizes it as such in “My Computer”.*
Roxio 5 did OK with 98 but had some serious driver and control issues with XP that caused lots of headaches. Roxio 6 and 7 have been flawless for me under XP.
astro - I’m running 98, not SE. I’m contemplating switching, though, as things just keep getting worse and worse.
Rex Fenestrarum - I read your post, then decided to restart my computer to see if I could get the error message to show up again, just to make sure I hadn’t misremembered it. Immediately after the blue Hewlett-Packard screen came up, I received this message:
I skipped going into the setup menu that time, and let my computer start up as normal. Immediately after the log-in screen, I got this message:
Seconds later, I got a critical error/blue screen of death, and the computer refused to work for me. I restarted again, and tried going into the Setup Menu to see if I could fix the problem. When the computer told me that my operating system was no longer found, I used several words that can only be said in the Pit, restarted yet again, and reset everything the way it was. At least I had my operating system back, which is a start, right?
Then I decided to take the new burner out and put the old one back in. The computer started up just peachy, but once I’d logged in, it told me that new PCI Riptide hardware had been found. Bear in mind that this is with the old burner in, the one that I have been using for at least a year and a half, the one that absolutely has to have all the proper software with it, because it’s the one that’s worked, right? The computer starts searching for drivers. No drivers. No smegging drivers!
And I still have no audio at all. Bloody hell. If you need me, I’ll be with my manual typewriter and record player, which can still be fixed with a nice spraying of WD40 and a screwdriver.
Well, it looks as if you’re running an unsupported OS (as far as the new burner goes), at least that’s what the driver’s manufacturer site says. It also looks like - for whatever reason - your new drive caused a PCI conflict and that replacing the drive with the old one works, but causes your sound card device to be redetected and for some reason Windows can’t find the drivers for it.
Some possible fixes include:
When prompted for the sound drivers, use the “browse” button to have Windows look in c:\windows\options\cabs. OEMS like HP and Dell sometimes put their drivers and the Windows setup files in that folder for later use.
See if you can find any drivers CDs that shipped with your system and use that to reinstall the drivers.
Download the driver from here. I don’t know if it’ll work on your system or not; I just typed “PCI Riptide Audio Legacy Resources” into Google and the first hit was that page, which mentions that it’s for HP systems.
As for the new burner, you might want to look around and see if you can find a “Windows 98 to Windows 98SE Upgrade disc”. Don’t get confused by the general Windows 98 SE Upgrade disc. The disc I’m referring to specifically updates Windows 98 to Windows 98 SE and is not the same thing as the general update disc that can update Windows 95 to 98SE. You with me?? Anyway, the 98>SE upgrade disc was only $29.99 or $39.99 back when it was new, so I can’t imagine it would cost a whole lot today.
Of course, if you post your system specs, we’d be happy to tell you what your best “non-98” upgrade path would be.
Given that your system shipped with Windows 98 FE on it, I’m guessing Windows 2000 or maybe XP (with all the eye candy stripped out) would work, but you might need more RAM.
Upon further review, I notice that your drive is actually is 52x CD burner and only reads DVD discs.
I don’t know if the person that bought this for you paid the MSRP $69.99 for it, but around $12 less than that you can buy a Samsung DVD burner from Newegg (see this) that can burn CDs, DVDs and even the new “dual layer” DVD discs. Blank “dual layer” DVDs are quite expensive right now, but they will evetually come down in price ; it’s one of those things you look for in a DVD drive even if you don’t plan on using it directly. I might just order one myself, as I have so much video on my hard drive that 8.7GB on one disc sounds quite appealing!
Also, when looking around at Newegg, I noticed that all the new CD\DVD burners seem to require Windows 98SE or higher, so it looks as if there mightbe an upgrade in your future.
Of all the driver sets in the known unverse the old HP Riptide audio+modem combo driver set is probably one of the most insane PITAs to re-install. HP does not post the necessary complete riptide driver set in thier website (it’s huge) . It took almost 3 days of searching driverguide.com and another driver site before I was able to assemble the correct drivers.
Having said this, I really can’t see why a new CDRW would be giving the Riptide combo a bellyache unless the Riptide hardware was using one of IDE IRQs 14 or 15, which would be very odd. I suspect you may have jostled the audio card out of place when you were installing the CDRW. HP’s are a tight fit.
You may also want to look in your BIOS and make sure the second IDE channel (usually IRQ 15) is activated or “on”. Make sure your master-slave setting on both the hard drive and the CDRW are set correctly depending on wheter they are sharing an IDE channel or not.
Here is an IDE update for WIn98 that lets it recognize large devices. While it does not address CDRW compatibility it’s unlikely to hurt and it’s a newer version.
Beyond this the first thing I would would is update my MB BIOS. Get the most recent BIOS form HP and apply it. I think chances are fair this will solve your hardware conflict problem.
Thanks for all the assistance, guys. I’m going to print this thread out, because I’m nowhere near computer-savvy enough to keep this all in my head.
I figured that was going to be a problem. Well, if I have to upgrade, I have to upgrade. This is what the System Properties tell me I have - I have no idea if it’s useful or not, because I don’t know what any of it means - it’s an HP Pavilion with Authentic AMD, an AMD-K6 3D Processor, Intel MMX Technology, and 60.0 MB of RAM. I have a sneaking suspicion that XP would be too much for my computer to handle, but then, I’ve been wrong before, especially where computers are involved.
