I have a Toshiba Portege 7000CT laptop which has an external floppy disk drive and a DVD-ROM drive (both proprietary, I think); the latter connects to the laptop using a PCMCIA card. I was able to use DJNafey's post ("How to start again and install Windows 98", 13-08-2004) to reformat the hard disk. I was able to boot up using the boot disk I downloaded from BootDisk.com, but when I put the Windows 98 CDROM in the DVD-ROM drive and typed cd e: at the DOS prompt, the DOS prompt did not change from A:> to E:>. Instead, I got the following message: INVALID DRIVE SPECIFICATION. On the off-chance that I had specified the wrong drive, I typed cd: d: at the DOS prompt, which only brought me to the RAMDrive created by the boot disk, as I suspected it would.

I went back and looked at the boot disk README file and found out that drivers are not included for any PC card CDROM drives. Unfortunately, I don't have the recovery CD or any other CDs which originally came with the laptop but I'm not sure that would help anyway since the laptop won't recognize the DVD-ROM drive.

So, I went back to the boot disk startup menu and chose step-by-step installation and then chose the "Start computer with CDROM support" option so that I could write down what was happening in case this would be helpful to anyone who may be able to assist me (it's pretty long so I won't include it here until someone says to do so). Is there anything I can do to get this laptop working?

Thanks.

You need to specify boot from cd in the bios... restart lappy and keep hitting the Delete key - you will then enter the bios. From there you can specify to boot from the CD drive

If you don't have the mscdex command on the PC anymore you can download it from here : http://www.computerhope.com/mscdex.htm That will enable CD usuage without windows running.

U also might end up needing DOS drivers for that external DVD/CD drive

I restarted and tried hitting the Delete key but after a half dozen or so hits the laptop started beeping everytime I hit it and, in the end, I was still taken to the Win98 Startup Menu. Then I copied onto the boot disk the mcdex command (mscdx221.exe) that I downloaded as you suggested. I then typed it at the A:\> prompt and the self extract utility ran and put mscdex.exe onto the boot disk. But when I rebooted with the boot disk there was no change from what happened before. BTW, if I turn the laptop on without the boot disk, after the Toshiba flash screen it goes very quickly to a c:\> prompt underneath the Microsoft (R) Windows 98, (c) Copyright Microsoft Corp 1981-1999, legend.

Any other suggestions as to how I can enter the bios? Thanks.

I've had some partial success entering the bios by hitting Esc while booting up. I changed the boot priority from FDD->CD-ROM->LAN->HDD to
CD-ROM->LAN->FDD->HDD. Then, I rebooted with the bootdisk in the floppy drive and the Win98 CD in the DVD-ROM drive but there was no difference from previous bootings. I also tried booting up off the Win98 CD alone but there was no difference there either.

Based on information I downloaded from computerhope.com, I tried to edit the autoexec.bat and config.sys files to add in the mscdex.exe file but the edit command didn't work when I typed it at the A:\> prompt.

Any suggestions for what to try next? Is there any way to get Win98 on floppy disk instead of CD? Thanks.

AS i said above already, u might need a native DOS level driver for the pcmcia CD drive, as most of them are not recognized under dos due to missing pcmcia support.
Can u post Model and Manufacturer of the drive and i´ll look for a dos driver

Toshiba DVD-ROM Model # PDVD-820. Thanks.

Try the one from http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/cont...s/p301cdrd.exe

Thanks. I just downloaded it and will try it tonight. At the risk of seeming like a total moron, I should copy it onto my bootdisk, right?

Thanks again.

yes