Problems Installing HP8210i CDwriter

[David Burman]

I am the owner of a HP 8100i CD-writer drive, and I installed it myself and it
works fine. I recommended your drives to a friend and he has subsequently
bought a HP8210i Cd-writer.

As I had installed my own drive, I offered to install his one for him.
Unfortunately, as you can possible guess things have not went quite as planned.

I followed the instructions careful, e.g watched video, noted recommended
settings, opened PC case etc and installed the new drive.

When the PC booted the first time after installation, in the DOS text displayed
it mentioned and found the new drive it then proceeded to boot up into Windows.

Windows also opened fine, and it then asked me to install the HP software and
drivers, I followed the instructions and everthing seemed to be going great.
Eventually it was finished and said everything was ok, and asked if we wanted
to register the product online. So, we said yes and filled in my friends
address etc. Once it had finished uploading info to the HP Internet Site, it
said to restart my PC. So we did and this is where everything seemed to fall
apart.

1. The PC would no longer boot into Windows 95, and instead displayed this
rather cryptic message:

While initializing device VFBACKUP:

VFBACKUP could not load VFD.VXD
Please run setup again.

As, I can't get into Windows even through Safe modes, I am unable to try
uninstalling the HP drivers and software. The HP unintall only allows it to run
through Windows!

I also checked all the connections in the PC and they seemed fine.

Other things I tried to do to solve the problem are as follows:

Getting hold of the file VFD.VXD and copying it into C:\windows\system
directory

Reinstalling Windows 95

Trying a Rescue program called Rescue95, to restore to a previous system
configuration etc.

Uninstalling, the HP Drive.

None of the things I tried worked and the dreaded message mentioned earlier
kept on appearing!

So, now my friend has a PC which doesn't boot to Windows 95 and a HP CDwriter
that he can't use.

In dos prompt mode, I am able to access A:, C: and D: drives and run DOS
programs. But, anything Windows related is a no go!

If anyone can provide a possible explanation and cause for this problem and
also provide a solution, I would be very grateful!

Thanks

Dave

P.S. This thread has been moved from Storage > General to Optical Jukeboxes & drives. - Hp Forum Moderator

[Joerg Schulte-Uebbing]

I have got exactly the same problems when trying to install a HP CD Writer Plus 8100 under Windows 95 B.
Has anybody found an answer (the original note was posted back in January!)?