CD-ROM Drive Doesn't Appear in Win98

I installed Windows 98 from a CD (it was actually bootable, contrary to what some have said about no Win98 CD's being bootable). And that was the last time that that virtual machine saw the CD drive. I reinstalled, but the same thing happened - no CD drive. After installation I made sure the vmtools.fdd was mounted, and then chose "install parallels tools," but even though I waited for about half an hour a couple of times nothing happened. So I used Parallels Explorer and copied the Parallels Tools CD to the Windows 98 hard drive, and installed the tools from within Windows. That seemed to work; the video and sound drivers are there.
I have checked the forums here, read related posts, and made sure that my VM CD DVD-ROM is configured properly, i.e. enabled, connect at startup, and connected to IDE 0:1 (tried others tho), but Windows never sees a CD drive. It has made it a pain to install software from a CD or run programs that need to see that the program CD is present.

Any suggestions?

 

What build of Parallels are you using? (It might be relevant.)

You have tried this work-around without success?

Perhaps there is a glitch in getting the CD-ROM drivers installed during the installation process. You might try recreating/reinstalling your Windows 98 VM from scratch while also copying the install files to the VM hard drive for installation instead of installing directly from the CD (see step 13.9b or alternately step 13.8).

If you do end up reinstalling from scratch, I recommend making an image of your install CD to install from instead of using the physical CD. I have run into problems during installation due to subtle scratches on the surface of the CD or iffy CD drive mechanisms. This helps minimize those problems.

 

I am using build 5584 - I had meant to include that info.

I would say for sure that the CD-Rom drivers did not install. My original install was from the CD for Windows 98 First Edition; when I reinstalled, I did it from an image. I upgraded that to Win98SE by copying the files to the hard drive for the install to a Win98SE folder (I used to do it that way back in the day as well, so the drivers were always there if Windows needed them later). I did the install from scratch twice with the same results.

I did try the workaround you mentioned before as I found that when I searched here. There are no CD-ROM devices present in Device Manager, and so no PRL-Virtual CD-ROM. I tried the new hardware wizard, but as far as I could tell it did not find a CR-ROM device.

Under hard disk controllers I found only "Primary IDE controller (single fifo)" and "Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller". I changed the Standard controller from 'default" setup to "both channels", shut down, and assigned the CD-ROM in the virtual machine setup to 1:0. Windows did not like that, and told me it would disable 32 bit drivers for the primary channel upon booting up. So I changed that back.

Keep in mind that I still have the Windows 98SE files on the Windows hard drive, so if there is a way to install the drivers from that I could; I also still have the Parallels Tools in a folder on the C: drive as well.

I removed "Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller", and had to reinstall the Primary channel driver, which now has an exclamation point by it in "Device Manager", indicating that "this device is either not present, not working properly, or does not have all the drivers installed." (Someone should have told Microsoft that the word 'either' is for two choices, not three or more). Any drivers I have been able to point it to have been the same.

 

So the wizard could not find the CD drive. Can you add it manually using the wizard or does this also not work?

The only other thing I can think of it to try is to uninstall Parallels, download a previous build, create your VM under that build, then upgrade Parallels back to the current build. Others have reported some success with this approach, although I haven't heard it used in regards to the disappearing CD drive problem.

Note: Because some elements of Parallels (especially with older builds) don't get completely removed/stopped or installed/activated until after your Mac is rebooted, it is usually a good idea to reboot your Mac:
1. After uninstalling Parallels before installing a different (older) version of Parallels,
2. After upgrading an existing installation to a newer build of Parallels prior to installing the updated Parallels Tools in your VM.

The following builds are still available for download:
Build 3188
Build 3214
Build 4128
Build 4560
Build 5160
Build 5584
(I think everything before Build 4128 is version 2.5, so your 3.0 product key isn't likely to work with them.)

One other thought: Is the CD drive present after installing Windows 98FE prior to upgrading it to Windows 98SE (does it disappear as a result of the upgrade)? Can you use your Windows 98SE upgrade CD to do a clean install without having install Windows 98FE first? (I only have an OEM version of Windows 98SE so I don't know whether this is possible.)

Yet another thought: Since Parallels emulates an Intel i815 logic board, some have reported minor improvements by downloading and installing in their VM the i815 chipset drivers from Intel for the given operating system they are running. This has primarily worked for migrated VMs. I would also think that these drivers would be automatically included.installed via Parallels at some point during the creation of the VM or during the installation of Parallels Tools.

 

Hello,

it is an uncommon issue and is probably caused by Windows upgrade. If it is possible, please, try to install Windows 98SE in a normal way, not via upgrade.

 

Thanks Alicia - I will try that, although I believe my Windows 98SE CD is an upgrade, so that is why I installed FE then SE.

I used build 5584 as I am on Leopard, so it wouldn't be wise to use an older build.

 

MacAngus, please report back to let the rest of us know whether or not you were successful.

 

I've run into the same problem. None of the hints here worked. Going back to version 2.5 does not work. A fresh install using a bootable Win98 SE CD does not work. The VM simply refuses to recognize the CD-ROM drive when running a Win98 VM under Leopard.

 

If you are installing from the CD (instead of copying the install files to your formatted VM hard drive) at what point of during (or after) the installation does the CD drive disappear? from Windows 98?

 

I'm having the same problem with my install of Windows 98 SE and Build 5584 of Parallels Desktop for Mac. I'm running under Leopard also. The drive seems to be detected properly even during bootup (for instance I left the windows 98 install disk in and it tried to boot from it again) but once on the desktop explorer does not show a cd-rom in existance. It also does not show anything representing one in the device manager. None of the above suggestions worked.

 

At this point, I am still using Tiger (10.4.11), so I can't help much. Apparently under Leopard, this "uncommon" problem is becoming more common. If someone has found a work-around that is not posted in this thread, please share it with the rest of us.

 

I have just had the same problem.

The CD-ROM stopped being seen towards the end of the installation -- I think it was just after the reset that follows the stage where it asks for your Windows serial.

BTW, it didn't matter whether the CD-ROM device was the physical drive or an ISO image.

This is with Win98 first edition / Parallels Desktop 3 build 5584 / OS X 10.5.2 / MacBook.

 

Well, I have just managed to install Windows 98 and get it to 'see' the CD drive.

What I did was copy the "Win98" directory from the Windows installation CD over to the virtual drive, then when the installation process complained that it couldn't find particular files (because it couldn't find the CD) I pointed it to that directory.

(Obviously you need to have your virtual hard disk formatted first before you can copy the Win98 directory over to it. Mine was there from an aborted attempted install but you probably could do it straight after the first reset stage of the installation process.)

When Windows was eventually installed it still couldn't see the CD drive. But what seemed to fix it was going Settings > Control Panel > Add New Hardware > Next > Next (Plug and Play Search) > No (not in list) > Yes (search for non Plug and Play) > Next

It found a Standard IDE/ESDI Hard Disk Controller, and after installing that the CD drive started working again (both real and ISO image).

Hope this helps other users (and possibly the developers).

S.