CDRLabs.com

Hi,

I recently bought a Philips CD-RW 48/16/48.
When I was installing it I bumbed into a kind of dilemma... the Drive was correctly identified under Windows XP, but couldn't read any CD's. So I needed to install the CD-RW correctly first... but the installation program was ofcourse, on a CD. I was in the position that I did not currently have another CD-ROM in my computer.

I tried finding the installtion program/drives on the philips web site , but no luck (does anyone know if they are available for download). After a while I solved it by letting a friend share his CD-ROM over the network.

But now to my question... what will happen if I say want to re-install Windows XP? Will I be able to complete an installation? Since XP can't natively read with the CD-RW I'd guess not... and do I need to say that that would suck?

Have anyone heard of this before? I searched some on google and managed to find an article reviewing different CD-RW's that mentioned exactly this problem, but otherwise I've seen nothing about it.

Any help to shed light on this issue would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

/Jonas, Versén, Sweden

windows does not need a driver for CD-RW drives.
when you install it in the computer windows should detect and recoginze it automatically with no need to install any drivers.

if there is some problem and windows does not work with the drive, why don't you try uninstalling it (from the device manager) and let windows redetect and reinstall it?

go to the device manager, find the drive and uninstall, then click the computer name (at the top) and Action->Scan for hardware changes.

might not be a bad idea to install also the secondary IDE channel (assuming that's the channel the drive is on), maybe there's a problem with the IDE channel that's causing the trouble.

for some help look here:
(instructions how to get to the device manager etc)
How to enable DMA in Windows XP (with pictures)
Problems enabling DMA in Windows XP

Well, the drive is up and running now after managing to run the installation CD that came along.

Here is the link I was refering to that mentions the same problem
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dy ... ge=printer

I don't think manually adding the hardware will make a difference since the drive was correctly detected as Philips 4816 by Windows and also mounted. It just didn't read my CD's :/

and it can't be a DMA problem since it is working now, or can it?