Setup cannot find a CD-ROM drive

Question

I'm trying to install WIN XP SP2 on a standard PC.
Boot from CD - and after some confirmation I got a blue screen:

Setup cannot find a CD-ROM drive Make sure your CD-ROM is on and properly connected to your computer. If it is a SCSI CD-ROM drive, make sure your SCSI devices are properly terminated. Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup press F3.

I replaced my CD ROM by another one (from another machine, where it works well), and got the same message again.

Setup from Windows (not boot from CD) - the same error appears.

I inserted another disc into the actual CD ROM - works well.

Installation CD is also checked - works well on another comp.

CD Drive is not SATA but IDE.

Any help ?

Solution

As asked via a comment and expanded a bit:

There are at least three reasons why windows can start using a CDROM, and fail to find it later during the installation:

1) A helpful BIOS and the wrong IDE mode.

Background: IDE stands for Intergrated Drive Electronics.
This means that the harddisk controller is integrated into the drive. This works fine if you only use a single drive on a IDE channel. If you add multiple drives these controllers will conflicts and you will have to configure them as master and slave. This means you get the following options:

• a single device on the cable/bus, configured as single. This works as intended.

• Two devices on the cable. One needs to be set to master (meaning control yourself and the other device), one to slave (meaning: do not try any control. Let another device manage you).

• If you set two devices to master it will not work.

• If you set two devices to slave it will not work.
• If you use a single device to slave it will not work.
• If you set a single device to master it may not work (many devices have the same jumper settings for master and single though, and enough logic on board to do the right thing).

However there are a few broken BIOSes out there which helpfully identify and boot from a device set to slave. Even if is is not supposed to work. (In my case a 486 board with an AMI BIOS).

The result of this is that a CDROM may show up in the BIOS. It may even boot and the fault goes undetected. Then at a point during the installation windows replaces the old (and slow) BIOS routines with its own drives, tries to access the CDROM and does not find a valid configuration. Thing break down at that point.

2) The same can happen with a SCSI CDROM connected via a SCSI hostadapter, with no drivers selected during installation and a BIOS on the SCSI card. In this case the configuration is fine.

An example of this is an Adaptec 1542cf (ISA busmaster hostadapter), a SCSI CDROM (e.g. a plexwriter 12x read, 4x write SCSI burner. The BIOS starts, adds boot hooks from the cards BIOS and boots the CDROM, using BIOS routines.

Drivers are selected, but somehow not yet made active until the next reboot?

Halfway the installation win95 switches away from the BIOS routines, does not find a working new configuration and needs to be power cycled before it can continue the installation.

3) Lastly, with SATA based devices not set to ancient IDE emulation mode you also need drivers. This is the most likely case with a modern motherboard and a SATA CDROM.

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Since the OP is using an IDE CDROM only case 1 can be relevant to him.

Comments

[ganesh]

How is the IDE CDROM drive connected? Is it the only device on an IDE cable and is it set to single? Are there a IDE HDD and the CDROM on the same IDE cable with the drive as master and the CDROM as slave (and it using ATAPI?)

[Buena]

@Hennes, CDROM is on a separate IDE cable and there is no other devices on that cable. Absolutely the same situation as on another PC, where all works fine. The CDROM reads all discs properly (video etc), but is not recognized during WIN setup. Virus is also checked by Avast.

[ganesh]

The reason I asked is because I had multiple motherboards/BIOS which 'helpfully' worked when a CDROM was configured incorrectly (a single device on a cable, jumpered as slave. That should not have worked.) However the BIOS booted the CDROM. Windows setup (using BIOS routines) successfully started and accessed the CD until it switched to its own drivers. Those did require a correct configuration, causing things to fail at that point of the installation.

[terdon]

@Hennes now that is weird. Could you please post that as an answer? Even if it is not the OPs specific problem, it sounds like it may well help someone down the line.