Creative Win95 FAQs: CD-ROM drivers in DOS mode

Why does Windows 95 say my CD-ROM drive is operating in 16-bit compatibility mode?

This is usually because your CD-ROM is loading a driver in your config.sys file. If you REM out that driver, then the Win95 driver will be able to load successfully. However, the downside to this is that you won't have any CD-ROM access when restarting in DOS mode. In order to get around this, you can either set up a multi-boot config, which can be difficult, or if you have the CTLOAD.COM program, you can use it in your DOSSTART.BAT file to load your CD-ROM driver. See below.

What is CTLOAD.COM, and how do I use it?

When you restart DOS mode from Windows 95 by selecting "Restart the Computer in MS-DOS Mode" from the shutdown menu, Windows runs the file C:\WINDOWS\DOSSTART.BAT. (You may notice that it already has MSCDEX loaded in there, along with possibly your DOS mouse driver.) In order to load your CD-ROM driver, which normally loads in your config.sys, we provide a program called CTLOAD.COM.

Usage : ctload <driver name> <driver parameters>

To load CDROM drive when you shut down to Win95 DOS mode, simply add the following lines in C:\WINDOWS\DOSSTART.BAT file :

   C:\[PATH]\CTLOAD C:\[PATH]\{CDROM DRIVER} /{DRIVER PARAMETERS}
   C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001

e.g. "c:\ctload c:\sb16\drv\sbide.sys /D:MSCD001 /P:1E8,11"

Note: The CDROM driver must be loaded before the MSCDEX command.

To load Sound Blaster low level device drivers, add the following lines in C:\WIN95\DOSSTART.BAT:

   C:\[PATH]\CTLOAD C:\[PATH]\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:xxx I:x D:x1 H:x
   C:\[PATH]\CTLOAD C:\[PATH]\CTMMSYS.SYS

where A: Base Address, I: Interrupt, D: DMA Channel, H: High DMA Channel

If you do not have CTLOAD yet, you can get ctload.exe from ftp.creaf.com in the pub/creative/patches directory. The self-extracting archive CTLOAD.EXE is also available on Creative Labs' BBS and CompuServe Forum.