Error message when trying to read data on CD or A (floppy) Drive:
"X:\ is not accessible. Incorrect function."

System: Win 2000 Pro

Here's what I know:
Had been working fine until recently- week, 2 weeks ago?

Here's what I've done/tried:
1) Installed a different, known-to-be-working CD drive. Same problem.
2) Hardware check: Windows sees the drives, knows they're there, and
says that they are functioning properly.
3) Re-installed the drivers, on both CD drives, a couple of times
4) re-installed the IDE drivers for the motherboard
5) Uninstalled the following software programs, suspecting conflicts:
Office 2000, InCD, Nero, iTunes
6) BIOS are set correctly
7) booted up without NAV dis-abled
8) booted up without Norton Personal Firewall dis-abled

**Tried booting in SAFE Mode, and Windows in Safe Mode CAN read the CD drive**
(forgot to check read of floppy in safe)

What I changed previous to this: Not sure :-<
iTunes was installed only days/a week or so ago
Norton updates itself automatically and regularly
Other than that, can't recall doing anything different.

I've searched MS's knowledge base. And Symantec's. And archives on
google groups. And google.

Suspect: 1) A corrupt Windows file, or 2) conflict

What I want: A solution that works, short of re-installing the OS or
wiping the hard drive completely, and then having to re-install and
re-configure everything. Backup and re-installation of data would be a
real problem, since the CD isn't functioning.

HELP!

---

Request for Question Clarification by feilong-ga on 30 Sep 2004 11:21 PDT

"Had been working fine until recently- week, 2 weeks ago?"

You should have thought about what software you installed (if any)
when the problem started before you uninstalled anything. In my case,
this type of problem occured when I installed InCD on XP with SP2. My
system was able to recognize my drive and indicated that it was
functioning properly but I wasn't able to access it within XP. I
traced the problem to InCD, uninstalled it, and everything worked
perfectly again. Since you already uninstalled Nero and Itunes, go to
Start Menu> Run then type "msconfig" and go to Startup tab. Uncheck
any entries left behind of the programs you uninstalled.

"3) Re-installed the drivers, on both CD drives, a couple of times"

This could also be an incompatible driver issue. If it's just an
ordinary CD drive, whether a CD writer or just a plain CD drive, you
don't need to install a driver for that. This also applies to your
floppy drive. Win2K will automatically recognize and install it's own
driver for your drives. So uninstall the drivers you installed for the
said drives, reboot, and see if it solves the problem. Please let me
know if it does.

-Feilong

---

Clarification of Question by ctw-ga on 30 Sep 2004 13:08 PDT

Run--->msconfig="cannot find the file msconfig (or one of its
components). Make sure"...yada yada yada

Does Win2000 use msconfig files? Will seek out another way to get to that same info.

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Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 30 Sep 2004 15:44 PDT

ctw...

Windows 2000 doesn't ship with msconfig, but you can use
the XP version, and it will work just fine. Download it
from The Tech Guide at the bottom of this page:
http://www.thetechguide.com/downloads.html

Or use this link:
http://downloads.thetechguide.com/msconfig.zip

Unzip it and place it in C:\WINNT\system, and
then run it as you did before.

sublime1-ga

---

Clarification of Question by ctw-ga on 30 Sep 2004 15:58 PDT

While the msconfig function wasn't there (and didn't see other
response, since we were offline tweaking)...it did make us go back and
look at startup programs. Turns out InCD was NOT removed. Removing it
did the trick...immediately had access to the A and E drives. Have
been updating and re-installing stuff, and so far so good.
Thanks for pointing us in the right direction!

---

Request for Question Clarification by feilong-ga on 30 Sep 2004 19:23 PDT

Hi ctw,

"Turns out InCD was NOT removed. Removing it did the
trick...immediately had access to the A and E drives. Have been
updating and re-installing stuff, and so far so good. Thanks for
pointing us in the right direction!"

Since it turned out that you had the same problem as I did and my
first advice solved your problem, will it be okay for you if I post an
official answer?

Feilong

---

Clarification of Question by ctw-ga on 30 Sep 2004 21:24 PDT

Yes!

Hi Ctw,

Thank you very much for allowing me to post an official answer. Hi Ctw,

Thank you very much for allowing me to post my original clarification
as an official answer:

"'Had been working fine until recently- week, 2 weeks ago?

You should have thought about what software you installed (if any)
when the problem started before you uninstalled anything. In my case,
this type of problem occured when I installed InCD on XP with SP2. My
system was able to recognize my drive and indicated that it was
functioning properly but I wasn't able to access it within XP. I
traced the problem to InCD, uninstalled it, and everything worked
perfectly again. Since you already uninstalled Nero and Itunes, go to
Start Menu> Run then type "msconfig" and go to Startup tab. Uncheck
any entries left behind of the programs you uninstalled.

'3) Re-installed the drivers, on both CD drives, a couple of times'"

This could also be an incompatible driver issue. If it's just an
ordinary CD drive, whether a CD writer or just a plain CD drive, you
don't need to install a driver for that. This also applies to your
floppy drive. Win2K will automatically recognize and install it's own
driver for your drives. So uninstall the drivers you installed for the
said drives, reboot, and see if it solves the problem. Please let me
know if it does.


It was a good thing you mentioned InCD in your original question
because it was the info that made my troubleshooting spot on. I think
InCD is incompatible with some system settings. I forgot to mention
that it also caused a similar problem on my Win98SE system. In that
system, my CD drive was perfect in all aspects of operation. The
problem I had was with my floppy drives (yes I have two) which kept on
displaying various drive error messages whenever I use any of them. It
took me sometime to trace the problem because no one will readily have
an idea that a software that's meant for a CD drive will cause access
problems to the floppy drive.

Since the problem is already solved and you already know one cause for
this type of problem, this link serves only as additional reference
for you regarding InCD related problems:

incd problem
://www.google.com/search?q=incd+problem&sa=Google+Search&cat=&hl=en


With regards to msconfig.exe, I'm not familiar with Win2K so I didn't
know that it is not included in the system. I thank our colleague
Sublime1 for that very helpful response.

Search strategy:

Personal knowledge + search for InCD problem in Google Web search


It's always a pleasure to help a colleague. Thanks again for the question.


Best regards,
Feilong

I've never used Windows 2000 per se, but I don't think that
re-installing Windows is very difficult, given that you have the CD
and serial number. Finding the particular bad file, erasing it,
finding it on the CD or the internet, may be more difficult than
reinstalilng it

hope that helps

Re-installing would be kind of tough, without the machine being able
to read anything on the CD....