Following upgrading to Windows Media Player 7 the sound would no longer function. I uninstalled Media Player 7 and reverted back to the old version, but now whenever I try to access the CD-ROM drive (regardless of what kind of CD is inserted) the following message appears: ‘E: Not accessible. The device is not ready’. The Device Manager claims the drive is working correctly, and rebooting the computer does not fix the issue. The computer is running Windows 98 SE.

If the CD drive is also a CD writer (e.g. CD-R or CD-RW) the problem may be caused by third-party CD writing software or drivers. The installation and uninstallation of Windows Media Player 7 may have caused the CD writing software to become corrupt, or modify its behaviour some other way. Some CD writing software comes with utilities which run in the background (such as packet writing software, allowing CDs to be treated like floppy disks and directly written through applications). You first need to close any such programs/utilities which are running in the Windows system tray (next to the clock) or are running invisibly in the background (this can be checked using CTRL-ALT-DEL). As it can be quite difficult to distinguish CD-related applications from other applications, perhaps the best approach is to close all background applications/processes (except essential Windows processes, such as ’systray’ and ‘explorer’) and then check if the problem persists. Otherwise, the issue is caused by one of these background applications. Then, it will be a process of elimination to find the application/process causing the problem.

Should the issue not be resolved by closing all background applications, the problem could be a result of the Windows Media Player 7 installation overwriting or corrupting the ASPI layer drivers. ASPI (Advanced SCSI Programming Interface) is a protocol allowing programs to access devices connected to a SCSI interface. However, on most computers (probably including your computer) devices (such as CD-ROMs) are connected using a different interface called IDE. That said, in the past I have found having an incorrect ASPI layer can affect devices connected on the IDE interface. So we need to check and update the ASPI layer drivers, which can be downloaded from the Adaptec website. Interestingly, I also read on the Adaptec website that Windows Media Player 7 seems to install a new version of the ASPI layer. Perhaps when Media Player 7 was installed this new ASPI layer was updated incorrectly, resulting in the problem you are experiencing at the moment?

To download the latest ASPI drivers, visit www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/driverindex.jsp. In the list of operating systems, click ‘Microsoft Windows 98′. In the next page, which lists all downloads for Windows 98, scroll about ¾ the way down the page until you reach the ‘SCSI Software’ heading. Click the link for the latest version of the Windows ASPI drivers. At the time of writing, this was ‘Windows ASPI drivers version v4.71.2′ released 23 November 2002 - (the direct link to this file is: www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/driverdetail.jsp?filekey=aspi_471a2.exe). Download this file to your computer. Once finished, follow the installation instructions (contained on the driver download page) to update the ASPI layer. Once finished, you can run the ASPICHK.EXE utility (included in the ASPI drivers installation directory) to verify the status and validity of the ASPI installation on your computer.