Pioneer DVD/CDROM Read Problem

Can anybody out there help?

I'm new to PC's, having decided to leave the MAC world.

Recently I began to build an Athlon 650 MHZ machine with an unformatted Maxtor 36 Gig HD as my Primary Master and a Pioneer 10X DVD drive as my Primary Slave. I have a Windows 98 SE CD I wanted to use to install my operating system, but I have apparently not been able to get the Pioneer DVD to properly install, so I can't get my Windows 98 (or any of my other Windows software (drivers, etc.) onto my hard drive!

Here's where I'm at right now.
On bootup the system recognizes everything in the machine, including all my cards and drives. And I can access my floppies and Hard Drive. Currently my Hard Drive is my Primary Master and my Pioneer drive is my Primary Slave. At one point I had my Pioneer as my Secondary Master. It doesn't seem to matter now where it is.

One time early on in this project (about 4 days ago) I did an FDisk and Format with a DOS 6.21 bootable disk and partitioned my Hard Drive into 18 sections. I loaded DOS drivers from Pioneer's website and I actually got the PC to recognize and access the DVD as my "R" drive. I was able to read CDs at that time.

Now I've got DOS 6.22 on my HD with Pioneer's DOS drivers loaded. When I boot the system, it recognizes the DVD Drive as my D: drive. But when I have a CD in it and type "DIR" I get a "CDR101: Not ready reading Drive D" with an "Abort, Retry, Fail" option.

I have tried making the drive a Secondary Master and a Primary Slave. I have switched data cables. I have modified my autoexec.bat and config.sys files with the MSCDEX.EXE and /D:MSCD001 stuff, but it still won't ready. Any advice? Is my drive bad now?

Thanks.

Mike C.

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Go here you may find something to help !
Good luck.

http://support.micronpc.com/file_lib/bbs/boot.html

Obviously something happened between dos 6.21 and dos 6.22. For all practical purposes they should be the same. Unless something else has changed, you should still see all of your hard drives; C to Q.:
I haven't used a DVD, but I assume it is loaded by the MSCDEX.EXE line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Check your CONFIG.SYS files and make sure you have a line:
LASTDRIVE=Z
The letter may be less than Z. But if it is less than R, ther will not be a letter for the DVD.
To accompdate changes you may make to the drives, I recommend setting the DVD as drive Z. This can be done by adding:
/L:Z
to the end of the MSCDEX.EXE line.
Question: What happened to the other 17 drives?
To double check the setup files go here:
//citizens.reagan.com/internet/politalk/images/cdrom.htm
Dennis