I recently formatted and installed Windows 2000 in an older PC. Whenever I boot up and try to access my cd driver in explorer, it gives me this error: The cd is not formatted. Format Now? It doesn't matter if I click yes or no, it still won't read the cd. It is recognized in explorer. I tried changing the cd from the second IDE channel to the first and slaved it off the hard drive. No Luck. I went to the manufacture's website and it said that the drivers were native to Windows and there should be no problems. I created a boot disk and tried to use its generic drivers for the drive. NOPE. I tried switching IDE cable on both channels. Nada. Any ideas? BIOS recognizes the drive and Windows tells me the drivers work fine. I did a web search and apparently a lot of people have this same problem. But the I couldn't find any advice different that what I already tried. Hardware Experts- Please Advise.

What type of CD are you trying to read. Is it a RW by any chance, or do you have this problem with all CD's?

I can't read any type of cd. Not just RW.

Have you tried using a CD lens cleaner? A dusty or smoky environment can cause problems reading the drive when the hardware is detected. You can get these cleaning kits from most PC shops (they usually are a CD with a small brush attached which wipes the lens as the cd spins). If this does not work, can you try the drive in another machine?

I agree that you don't need drivers to read from CD rom drives. Did you install windows using this drive?

Can the CD(s) be read on a different PC? If so, cleaning the reader lens AND the CD is recommended.

P2E