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by chickenlegs

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i have 2 pc,s brought to me. both came from a local collage. both have the same problem. i was asked to remove all collage data & reinstall win. 98. i [cleaned] fdisk, formated. & installed 98.at the last of install, plug & play, ect., it lost the cdrom. i have retried 5 times and still the same results. is there somthing on the motherboard thats causeing this or what? please help me.

15 replies

by gary mcp

First off, how are you booting that pc? If you're booting up from a Windows floppy, the cdrom drivers are included on the disk. But then once you've started to install from cd, and the system reboots, it boots from hard disk, which doesn't have the cdrom dirvers on it.

There are two things you can do, either copy the contents of the boot floppy onto the c: drive (which can make the whole system a bit "messy") or you can copy the installation files from the cd to the hard disk and run setup from there (a much better option).

The only files needed for a Win98 install are the Win98 directory on the cd. Copy that folder to the c: drive and you should be home free.

Hope this helps,
Gary

by chickenlegs

i have used a floppy to load the c drive. it took it .it went as far as the last minute of install.im talking on install with the cdrom. then it says it preformed a ileagal operation. then thats all she wrote, the cdrom wont read from that point.

by bobho

If you go into the bios does the cd show up? What about the system properties in windows (does the cd show up but has an "x" or "?" next to it or doesn't it show up at all)?

Usually, windows has a driver for the cd that will work but you might need a driver from the manufacturer (although haven't seen this before).

Something else to look at is the jumper settings if the cd and hard drive are on the same ide cable. If so, is the hard disk set to master and the cd to slave?

Interesting.
DrBob:>)

by chickenlegs

on bios it shows cdrom with no x or anything.when i got[1 time] to windows and went to system devices there was no cdrom showing.

by markh

When you boot from floppy instead of running the install from the CD copy the win98 directory from the CD to the hard drive. Then run the install from the hard drive. This will allow Windows to complete the install and detect the CD-ROM.

by thechas

For EVERY W98 installation that I have done, I have lost CD-ROM access after the OS installs devices and boots.

The problem is that the default W98 drivers are out of date.

What you need is the IDE bus driver for the chipset on the motherboard.

If you need help finding the driver, go to www.motherboards.com or www.wimsbios.com
They both have tools to help you identify the motherboard.

The chipset is likely either Intel, AMD, VIA, or ALI.
Once you identify the chipset, use the links at either web site above, and download the latest drivers.

When I set up a new PC, I place the drive into a hot swap bay,
partition and format the drive,
copy the Windows CD, driver files, and Winzip onto the drive.
I then load Windows from the hard drive.

Chas

by fraserc

if you install cd rom drivers and that does not work put in the proper lines in the autoexec.bat and config.sys files so that it will look for the drivers and the location they are in.

autoexec.bat should have a line that looks like this......mscdex.exe /D:MSCD001

config.sys file should have a line that looks like this........Device = SLCD.SYS /D:MSCD001
the SLCD.sys part of this line refers to the device driver so you will have to change that to the one that you are using

by sonnguyen

The error while installing windows can be a bad disk or faulty memory, cpu or motherboard. This one sounds very much hardware problem. The CD was ok so that you could start installing windows only when loading it first time the m/c fail. I would check the memory by swapping it with known good memory and try installing win 98 with these.

by chickenlegs

tried new ram, still the same. tried loading drivers for cdrom,took it ok, but still no go. i got ide controllers to show no problem. next bootup, lost controllers again.

by sonnguyen

Hi
Is your win98 cd ok? have you tried to use this cd to install windows to a different m/c? unless the two machines both have the same ide controllers and too weird for windows to see them. usually windows will supply it generic driver for the ide regardless who manufactured it. I would try to confirm if your windows cd is good to install, sometimes a scratch or mudge in the right place will give installation error. best of luck.

by chickenlegs

found problem. it turned out to be[dont ssk why] the audio cable was bad. changed it and cdrom just popped up on next reboot. you tell me how that had anything to do with it?

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