January 3, 2012

Dear Forum,

   After going through a bunch o' crap with my new Windows 7 box

regarding Ghost and my new SATA DVD burner, I found out that the

"oakcdrom.sys" will only allow PATA CD\DVD drives to be "seen" by

Ghost.

   To solve the problem, just add ahci.sys v1.1 to your boot floppy

or NightOwl's Ghost Boot CD/DVD--on Steroids! and add this line in your

config.sys file:

device=ahci.sys /d:nightowl

   ahci.sys v1.1 is available here:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=1844973&swItem=wk-61401-1&prodNameId=1844975&swEnvOID=2096&swLang=13&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=0

   Hope this helps people out.

Big Al

@ Big_Al



Big_Al wrote on Jan 3^rd, 2012 at 9:38pm:

To solve the problem, just add ahci.sys v1.1 to your boot floppy or NightOwl's Ghost Boot CD/DVD--on Steroids! and add this line in your config.sys file: device=ahci.sys /d:nightowl ahci.sys v1.1 is available here: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en... Hope this helps people out.

Thanks for the *heads up* on that DOS driver for SATA optical drives!  I'll have to give that one a try!

There's another DOS driver that I have used:  GCDROM for DOS command line syntax

But, it's getting hard to find that program--download links are mostly broken!  But here's one:

Download *gcdrom.sys* v2.4--here--yes the download file is called Odd_DOS_Driver.zip--gcdrom.sys is inside the zip!

Night,

    Part of my "bunch o' crap" was trying gcdrom.sys!  Proved to be useless for me with my

particular DVD burner, a Lite-On LightScribe IHAS424-98 Retail.

    Ya know, just in case ahci.sys doesn't work on a particular burner, it can't hurt to put

it as well as gcdrom.sys AND oakcdrom.sys, along with the appropriate lines in the config.sys!

    The thing is, in my 4+ day quest for an answer as to how to see my burner with Ghost,

I found that gcdrom.sys Is Not For SATA's In AHCI Mode, just EDI.  I can't recall where, but that

fact sent me on the quest again and I found the ahci.sys v1.1.

Big Al

@ Big_Al


Big_Al wrote on Jan 5^th, 2012 at 8:39pm:

Proved to be useless for me with my particular DVD burner, a Lite-On LightScribe IHAS424-98 Retail

I have a Lite-On LightScribe iHAS424 B and it works fine with the *gcdrom.sys* program on my system.  You do have to get the DOS syntax just right to make everything work *correctly*.


Quote:

I found that gcdrom.sys Is Not For SATA's In AHCI Mode, just EDI

I wasn't aware of that as an issue!  I'll have to check to see what my BIOS settings for the Lite-On optical drive's SATA controller is on my system.

Not positive, but I think there are some issues booting to DOS and accessing HDDs using older DOS programs like Ghost 2003 or Corp Ghost 7.5, and maybe even 8.xx when the SATA controller is in AHCI Mode.

Do you know--is AHCI Mode important for optical drives--or just HDDs?  I heard that about the only *big* difference (advantage?) was that you needed the AHCI Mode to enable *hot swapping* your SATA HDD directly from the motherboard controllers--something I have no intention or desire to do!

@ Big_Al


NightOwl wrote on Jan 6^th, 2012 at 1:35am:

You do have to get the DOS syntax just right to make everything work *correctly*.

If you post your DOS boot commands that you used for *gcdrom.sys* in config.sys and autoexec.bat, maybe I can see what isn't working right.

Big_Al wrote on Jan 5^th, 2012 at 8:39pm:

it can't hurt to put [ahci.sys] as well as gcdrom.sys AND oakcdrom.sys, along with the appropriate lines in the config.sys! [. . .] I found that gcdrom.sys Is Not For SATA's In AHCI Mode, just EDI.

I hadn't considered that possibility, but that could well be the cause of some symptoms I've observed lately.  I've been using the gcdrom/oakcdrom combination for some time, and it worked on most of the early generation SATA-CD machines I had been coming across (c. Vista era).  But gcdrom doesn't work on some of the machines I'm seeing lately.

Modern machines all support booting from flash drives, which I much prefer anyway, so I didn't bother troubleshooting what was wrong with gcdrom.

Seeing Big_Al's post here, I decided to test it on a new Dell laptop I happened to be prepping for a client.  Whaddaya know -- it works!  I rechecked gcdrom.sys and verified it doesn't work with this laptop's DVD drive, but ahci.sys does.

Thanks, Big_Al -- nice find!