CD-Quickshare FAQ

Troubleshooting

CD-Quickshare Fix for MSCDEX.EXE problem that changes the actual drive letter assignment and prohibits Windows 95 from creating the 'Virtual' drive.

The basis of this problem stem from CD-Quickshare's use of real mode device drivers (config.sys) in conjunction with the MSCDEX program (autoexec.bat).

As you may or may not know Windows 95, does not require real mode device drivers (entries in the config.sys that look like device=c:\cdrom\cdromdrv.sys) to recognize devices like CD-ROM, Zip or Jaz drives. Windows 95 will automatically recognize these devices when they are connected to a PC as the machine boots up and will assign drive letters. Usually this assignment starts from letter C: as the first hard drive partition and will continue from that point. Meaning, if a Windows 95 PC has 2 hard drives (each with a single partition), a CD-ROM drive and a Zip Drive, they will be assigned as follows:

C: ->First Hard Drive

D: ->Second Hard Drive

E: ->CD-ROM Drive

F: ->Zip Drive

NOTE: Depending on the type of network you are using (in conjunction with a  login script) will determine where Network Drive mappings begin and end. Usually they start on drive F: or G: and can continue until Z:. If you have too many locally attached devices and a Network drive is attached to F:, then these devices will be assigned the next available letter.

All of these drive letter assingments are done dynamically by Windows 95 and will change as new devices are added or subtracted.

OK, so now lets get back to the basic premise of the problem. We are trying to install CD-Quickshare on this machine and what happens?

First, it should be reiterated that CD-Quickshare creates a 'Virtual' CD-ROM drive and assigns a letter to it.

Second, CD-Quickshare needs at least one actual (physically installed on this machine) CD-ROM drive to create CD images.

When CD-Quickshare is installed on a typical Windows 95 PC that dynamically assigns drive letters to devices as they are recognized, it gets 'confused'. Here is an example:

This is a screen shot of a typical My Computer for Windows 95. Notice that the current CD-ROM drive letter is assigned to D:.

This is dynamically done through the Settings in the Control Panel under System Properties. Let's take a closer look at it now. If you click on the Device Manager Tab and double click on the CD-ROM entry under Computer, you will find the entry for your actual CD-ROM drive like below.

Double click on this entry to open the properties of the CD-ROM drive device and then the Settings Tab to see the screen shot below. Notice the Current drive letter assignment is D: and the Start drive letter and the End drive letter are blank.

Once CD-Quickshare is installed and the software adds real mode device drivers in the Config.sys and MSCDEX into the Autoexec.bat, the current drive letter assignment will change after the PC has rebooted. Check out the My Computer view again and you will see that CD-ROM drive is now assigned to E: like below.

If you attempt to run CD-Quickshare you will get the message at the beginning of this document indicating this:

If you choose YES then CD-Quickshare will start and display the screen shot below, but is not capable of running properly nor is the message accurate - NO will cancel the program.

This leads us to believe that the changes made in our Config.sys and Autoexec.bat are not correct, but the message is misleading. Your Config.sys line should look very similar to this:

DEVICE=C:\CDSHARE\CDSHARE.EXE/I:C:\CDSHARE\CDSHARE.INI

And your Autoexec.bat line should look something like this:

C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX /D:CDSHARE$ /L:E

The readme file states that the /L:E parameter can be changed to /L:F, that is correct if your actual drive is assigned to letter E:. The help file states that you can eliminate the /L:E parameter totally, but it is preferrable to leave it in and specify which letter will be assigned as the virtual drive.

If you click OK, then CD-Quickshare will start but will not have a 'Virtual' drive to create images - please exit out of the software at this point.

Now, go back into the Control Panel under System Properties. Click on the Device Manager Tab and double click on the actual CD-ROM drive device to bring up the properties as we view it below. This time notice that the Current drive letter assignment is E: and that we will change the Start drive letter and End drive letter to D:

Once you click OK here and again on the System Properties, the Windows 95 PC will ask you to reboot to apply the system settings that have changed - please do so. When the machine has restarted, open up My Computer again and it should look like the screen shot below. Notice that drive D: is the actual CD-ROM drive and that now drive E: is the 'Virtual' drive. If you click on D: it will contain the contents of the CD-ROM drive (if any) and drive E: will be blank and contain no files:

Now when you start CD-Quickshare everything will work properly and you will get the following message:

Click OK and CD-Quickshare is now ready to for use.