[coreyao]

I just purchased an external cd-rw drive for my comaq presario laptop. I've installed the driver for it. The computer recognizes the new hardware and driver. I am unable to access the drive from the computer. It did not 'automatically' recognize the new hardware like the manual stated. What am I missing?
I am not an expert computer user.... I know enough to know that I do not know enough. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated. I had to download the driver from the products site instead of using the diskete provided because that drive has been physically damaged, though I wouldn't suspect that would make any difference since I was able to get the appropriate drivers online.

 

[johnwill]

The O/S in use would be a big help. If you're running W9x, you'll need to install a driver to recognize USB connected mass storage. You state that the computer recognized the hardware, then it didn't. How about specifics of what happened?

 

[coreyao]

It's running a Windows 98 o/s.
The sequence of events:
1. Driver downloaded. Installed. Window popped up telling me to restart to complete the installation. This was done.
2. the external cd-rw was physically installed. I went to the device manager which confirmed its existence. I searched for the any new drivers for the physical device and it was found.

-at this time I had imagined I would be able to access the new drive from my desktop... this did not happen, nor can I find it in program files, or in My Computer.

So my question restated: Where in the heck is it?:upset:

 

[johnwill]

I honestly can't say. I've used USB 2.0 drives on W98, and after the installation of the driver, they worked as intended. I also connected a USB 2.0 CD-RW drive without incident to W98. Of course, W2K or XP recognize USB connected mass storage devices with no additional drivers.

 

[coreyao]

Thanks for the advice you sent concerning my cd-rw problem. I went around the web doing some research, seeing if anyone else had the same problem and I stumbled upon a site the answer! What I didn't post here was the information that I have an AMD K6-2 processor and not an intel. Apparently there is a glitch in the driver software supplied with my external cd-rw when applied to a computer with the AMD processor. They had a patch which I downloaded and voile!
Once again, thanks for replying to my post!