will reformatting fix my cd drive?

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sophie - 07 Mar 2004 22:33 GMT

I screwed up my WIn95 computer by thinking I knew what I
was deleting-- trying to clean out my old files before
giving to a friend. Now my CD drive keeps opening when I
put a disk in.
Thought I would reformat & reinstall Win95- I have all
the disks and downloaded a bootdisk.
Will reformatting from the bootdisk let me fix this?
Can you give me steps on how to reformat?
thanks

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PattyL - 08 Mar 2004 16:20 GMT

Since you are planning to give this away, formatting and reinstalling Win95
is an excellent idea. I'm not sure that I exactly understand what's
happening with your CD drive, but if it worked fine before you deleted a
bunch of files, then chances are that it will work fine if you reinstall
Windows. You may also have to reinstall any drivers that came with your CD
drive. Win95 recognizes many CD drives without additional drivers, but not
all.

Make sure that you have the ProductKey required for installation before you
format. You need this to complete the installation and can get it from the
registry before you format but not after (just in case you have lost the one
that came with your system).

This article will tell you how to format the drive.

How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a
Hard Disk
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=255867

PattyL

> I screwed up my WIn95 computer by thinking I knew what I
> was deleting-- trying to clean out my old files before
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> Can you give me steps on how to reformat?
> thanks

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sophie - 11 Mar 2004 00:43 GMT

Thank you for the info. I managed to reload Win95 -
holding the drive closed it started to read the disk
after I installed the drivers. I do not understand the
partitioning info in the article you listed - way over my
head-- but it seems to be installed ok. I am going to get
a new CD drive installed since now the door doesn't open
at all-just whirs loudly- so I think I got lucky when I
reloaded! The black screen was a bit scary and I'll
surely not try going delete-crazy ever again. Hoping a
new drive will allow me to give away a nice clean usable
system- they want it for word processing only. Too
ancient for much else. Thanks again, this forum gave me
good info (and confidence) :)

>-----Original Message-----
>Since you are planning to give this away, formatting and reinstalling Win95
[quoted text clipped - 29 lines]
>
>.

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cquirke (MVP Win9x) - 12 Mar 2004 10:17 GMT

>Since you are planning to give this away, formatting and reinstalling Win95
>is an excellent idea.

As long as he's prepared to do the slog of applying all the updates
again - e.g. IE 5.5 SP2 for MIME roadworthyness.

I'd prolly not do that. I can't think of any sware-level things that
could generate his mileage, but can think of screwdriver-level issues
that would. For example, if he did any of the following...
- manually pulled out the tray
- stripped and rebuilt the CD-ROM drive
- mounted it in such a way that screws catch on the innards
- mounted it in such a way that the tray can't close completely
...then he'd have that problem. The drive can't satisfy itself that
the tray is closed properly, so opens it again.

>-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

Running Windows-based av to kill active malware is like striking
a match to see if what you are standing in is water or petrol.

>-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

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