# Dos can't find cd or RW drives



## blakin (Dec 3, 1999)

Recently installed a RW drive and windows 98 finds and uses this drive and it's software. Also uses the CD ROM drive well. However, when in pure DOS and running a DOS only program, it can't find my CD drives. Only finds the C and A drives.


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## codejockey (Feb 11, 2002)

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. You may be missing drivers that will allow DOS to recognize the CD drives (nowadays, many manufacturers don't even provide these drivers, figuring, I guess, that no one uses DOS anymore ...). You may not be totally out of luck, however. The Windoze boot disk (perhaps one you made) will likely contain generic CDROM drivers, which will work with most IDE/ATAPI devices. That may not help with your CD-RW, but at least it's a start. You might try the manufacturer web site to see if they provide DOS drivers for their CD-RW.

Hope this helps.


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## blakin (Dec 3, 1999)

Thank you, these are good ideas. I'll try them and let you know.
Bryan


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## blakin (Dec 3, 1999)

I installed a standard MS CD rom Driver for DOS. This installation also modified my "Batch" files, and my CD rom drives all came up and are now working normally in DOS, or in Windows 98. 

I now find I have a problem in writing directly to the CD disk from Autocad 12 for DOS. 

Even though I can access the D or E drive and record other standard data and files, the recording format of Autocad 12 is apparently not compatable with the format of the Plextor drive or it's default formatting of the disk.

Any Ideas? Perhaps from some Autocad Guru out there ???

Thanks for your helpful suggestions, Bryan


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

If you are trying to write to the CD-RW in DOS it will never work. You need the WIndoze based app to write to the drive. What size is the file you are trying to write to the drive?


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## blakin (Dec 3, 1999)

I copied the entire acad dir of 12 megs onto the CD RW drive. Also my Qbooks dir 45 megs, and a document dir of 2 megs.

I normally save all Acad .dwg files to the C:\Acad dir in dos. I can't save a .dwg file to the CD RW from DOS based autocad, but I can copy any file from the C:\Acad dos directory to the CD RW drive while working in Windows or in Windoze dos. Autocad can't read it from the CD drive because when in pure DOS, any dir command or AutoCad command can't see any file there except the DOS UDF driver file. (even though there's tons of data there in Windoze). 

However, FYI & future reference, if I lose the hard drive, or an autocad .dwg file, I can copy it from the CD RW drive back onto the C:\Acad directory (or a floppy in A:\drive, while working in Windows or Windoze dos, and Pure DOS autocad can read either of these drives and open files just like nothing had happened.


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