Thanks for any help you can be… Sharon

Hi Sharon,

This question is a little more technical than I usually put in the newsletter, but it is a good question that I think I can give you a good explanation for.

First, you are installing a new CD-ROM drive, that is great! It is something that is fairly easy to do, but many people don’t dare to try on their own.

When you put in that CD-ROM drive, it needs several connections set up inside the computer. The simplest connection is the power. It comes out of the power supply near the back of the tower, and plugs into the back of the CD-ROM drive. There are no settings needed for the power.

The second connection is a sound cable that goes from the back of the CD-ROM drive to either your sound card, or a socket on the motherboard if the sound is built in. Again, that connection is quite simple.

Finally, you need to plug in the IDE or data cable. This is keyed so that it only goes in one way (usually the red stripe on the cable will be on the same side as the power connector) and the other end of the data cable plugs into a socket on the motherboard. If there is only one drive connected to that cable, you are done setting it up.

If, however, you are connecting two drives to the same IDE cable, you will need to set them up so that they can both communicate on that cable without interfering with each other. This is where the Master and Slave settings come in. One drive needs to be set as the master drive, and the other needs to be set as the slave drive. These settings are made using pins and a jumper on the back of the drive. You will see 6 to 8 extra pins on the back end of the drive that are not part of the data cable connection. These pins usually have a little black cap that goes over two pins. This cap is called a jumper, and you can move it from one set of pins to another to change the settings of the drive to “Master”, “Slave” or another setting called “Cable Select”.

The hardest part for you is to examine the outside of the drive and find the markings that tell you how to set the pins. Most of the drives that I have worked with, have some letters on the top, just above the pins. They have a pair of letters over each set of pins. MA for the master, SL for slave and CS for cable select. What you need to do is set one of your CD drives to Master, and the other to slave. Then both the drives will work together on the same IDE cable.

I hope this helps you get your drives working correctly.

Elizabeth

 How To Install Roxio Creator 2009

Roxio Creator is a great program for burning CDs, and creating backups of your photos, music and data, but often, the task of installing such a program is intimidating for the average user. 

This tutorial will walk you through each step of installing Roxio Creator, and in future tutorials, you will learn how to perform basic tasks using Roxio Creator.

Let’s get started installing the program.

1. Insert the Roxio Creator 2009 CD in your CD ROM drive. If your program came on 2 disks, make sure it says, Installation DVD Disc 1.

2. After a few seconds, the CD will spin up and a small “AutoPlay” dialog box will appear asking you what you want to do with the disk. Click on “Run Setup.EXE” to start installing the program as shown here. 

3. Click the “Continue” button if the UAC dialog box appears, and wait while the setup program loads.

4. A setup window will appear. Click “Next” in the first screen. 

5. The license agreement will be displayed, read it carefully and then click the radio button to accept the  terms of the agreement and click the “Next” button. 

6. The next screen allows you to enter your name, organization, and serial number, which is found on the back of your CD case. Enter this information, and click on the “Next” button. 

7. The Install Location screen gives you the default location to install the program. Do not change this location unless you know what you are doing and have a good reason to. All you really need to do here, is click the “Next” button. 

8. You are now ready to install the Roxio Creator 2009 program. Click on the ”Install” button to get started. 

9 Wait while the program insalls, you will be able to watch the progress bar as the setup program works.  Be patient while the program installs, it took almost a half hour on my computer.

10. When the installation is finished, you will see the setup window telling you that the setup wizard has completed successfully. Just click the “Finish” button to close the program, and then click the “Yes” button in the dialog box that appears to restart your computer.

11. When your computer has restarted, you will have an icon for Roxio Creator 2009 Ultimate on your desktop. 

You now have Roxio Creator 2009 installed on your computer. 

In future lessons, we will learn how to use the program.

Elizabeth

Dear Computer Lady,

I just wanted to write to you, we have a windows 98 second edition computer.

It was previously used for a business. We wanted to erase the entire hard drive. We went through dos and hit c:\format 

and yes we formatted the drive.

Now it will not let us reinstall windows 98 saying there is an invalid system disk.

We have a diskette drive and a cd r/rw too. The system disk is on cd.

What can we do to get my pc up and running again? Thanks

Holly

Dear Holly,

You will need a Windows 98 boot floppy disk.

Once you have the disk, put the Windows 98, CD in the CD-ROM drive and the floppy disk in the floppy drive.

The computer should boot to the floppy disk and give you several options. Choose the enable CD-ROM access option and let it finish booting.

When it gets to the A: prompt, look at the line above, it will tell you the drive letter of the CD-ROM. If the letter is E: for example, you would type:

E:\setup

and press enter. This should start the Windows Setup from the CD-ROM.

Elizabeth