What have I done now?!
 

Somehow I have managed to ‘lose’ my CD drive. I was running Encyclopaedia Britannica and accessing the CD when the program stopped running. Having tried several times unsuccessfully to start it, I decided to uninstall, and then reinstall, the program, which I did using McAffee Uninstaller.. .. .The CD now refuses to autostart (with any CD); it repeatedly clicks as if trying to start but does not spin up. When I select it from the ‘My Computer’ icon it tells me that ‘D:\ is not ready, the device is not accessible’. Everything else (Windows, internet, other programs, etc) seems to work OK.. .. .I suspect that the uninstall program deleted a shared file or files which were also use by the D drive controller. Before I take the machine to my long-suffering local repairer and admit that I have mucked it up yet again, has anyone any ideas how I might remedy the situation?. .. .I’m running Win98, by the way, if that makes any difference.

Have you got tweakui installed? If so go to start-settings - control panel, you will see an icon for tweakui <img src="http://goinside.com/98/8/w98tg4-4.gif" alt="" /> select it click on the my computer tab and you will see a list of all your drives A, B, C, D etc etc, check to see if the D drive has a tick in the box if not click it and then it should come back. <img src="http://goinside.com/98/8/w98tg4-5.gif" alt="" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Cool]" src="cool.gif" />

Thanks for that, Spanners, I haven't got Tweakui but I'll try to get it and see if it cures it.

This is from distant memory of Windows 9X and is NOT for the faint hearted!. .Use FDISK /MBR to restore your master boot record on your primary boot disk (C:). .First boot your PC from a floppy disk - The windows startup disk is favourite.. .At the A:\prompt type FDISK /MBR. .This should restore the master boot record on your C: drive and when you restart your CD Drive should be recognised.. .This is always assuming that you are not suffering from a hard failure of the CDROM drive or other hardware failure and that the IDE channel that the CDROM is attached to is enabled in your BIOS etc etc etc.. .. .Good luck

Problem solved......new CDROM drive installed (DOH!) Thanks for the suggestions, anyway folks. TweakUI looks as though it might be a useful little tool.. .. .Aren't these new drives fast - my old one was a 24X! Still, it was over four years old and it had seen good service.

Just found this site <a href="http://www.annoyances.org" target="_blank">http://www.annoyances.org</a> could be very handy for anyone running windows, you can also download TweakUI if you require it.

VM. .that site is where I found TweakUI. AS you say, could be very useful.