WINDOWS XP WOES

                An article from David Froude

1 LOSS OF CD-ROM DRIVES
-----------------------
Has anyone experienced the same problem I have encountered twice
in the last six months on Windows XP?

This particular problem seems to corrupt the CD-ROM drivers by
some means and they disappear and cannot accessed.  Under
System/Device Manager the CD-ROMs have question marks against
them.  Re-installing the drivers does not help nor is it corrected
by installing XP back over the original installation.  In both
cases I have had to reformat the C drive and re-install Windows.

I have not been able to find what actions have caused this problem
but believe it may have been happened when I installed a program
but was not evident until after I had switched off and then on
again the following day.

If anyone has had a similar problem I would be interested in a
solution which does not involve re-installing from basics.

2 UNABLE TO INSTALL PROGRAMS FROM CD-ROM DISK
---------------------------------------------
I have encountered this problem on a number of occasions and on
Adobe software I was told that the problem is due to a loop when a
specific language is chosen.  Adobe's solution was to copy the
contents of the disk to the C drive and re-install in the safe
mode.

Some programs where I have had this problem will not install in
the safe mode but so far will install in the normal operating mode
from the C drive.

The problem during installation from a CD-ROM states that the CAB
file cannot be found but it is on the disk!

Probably there is a corrupted file on my machine but since Adobe
have a fix for their software it would appear to be a common
problem.

If anyone else has encountered this problem and identified the
corrupted file on XP or found a way round without copying the
whole disk to the hard drive I would be interested.

David Froude

February 2004









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