Hi.
Had problems with Laptop so I removed W98 and formatted HD.
The machine doesn't have Int. CDR so I loaded up W95 by floppy, which was fine, installed the Ext. CDR, and then proceeded to use W98 upgrade disc.
Disc is read, proceeds to check drives for W98 setup and then freezes!
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Sounds like 95 having a problem with the ext cdr. Can you network it with another comp to load w98?

Hi,
Thanks for reply.
Can't network.
I was wondering if I removed the W95 o/s, is there a way of me using a 98 start up disc where by I could have the external CDR recognised, thus enabling me to use the 98 CD.

If you use the standard Windows 98 floppy startup disk, it installs drivers that work with most CD-ROM drives. However, I would think that you'd probably have to install a PCMCIA driver in order to see your external CDR. Is that right - does it use a PCMCIA slot? Or does it plug in using the parallel port or USB or something?

In any case, it only takes 5 minutes, so it's worth a go. If you don't have a Windows 98 Startup Disk, I believe you should be able to download one from http://www.BootDisk.com.

Let us know whether that helps or not.

Hi,
Yes it is a PCMCIA CD-Rom.
I've got a 98 Start Up Disc, but it doesn.'t recognise the CR-Rom at start up.
Is there a way of getting the drivers which must be in the machine enabling it to work under W95, onto the 98 Start Up Disc.
And if so would this enable the 98 to recognise it at start up.
Thanks.

Yes, there is. You need a .SYS file for the drivers (probably one for the PCMCIA controller and another for the CDROM drive.

Then what you need to do is make a copy of your Win98 Startup Disk before we mess about (you don't want to break the original!).

Working on the copy, free up some space by deleting Fdisk.exe, Oakcdrom.sys, Btcdrom.sys and the five Aspi*.sys files.

Copy your PCMCIA and CDROM .sys files onto the floppy.

Edit the Config.sys file in Notepad.
- In the [CD] section, delete the lines that try to load up Oakcdrom.sys, Btcdrom.sys and the five Aspi*.sys files.
- In the [CD] section, add 2 lines to load up your PCMCIA and CDROM driver - such as "device=pcmcia.sys" and "device=extcdrom.sys /D:mscd001"
- Save and exit.

Boot from the disk and see what happens. I can't guarantee that that will definitely work - might need a bit of tweaking - the /D:mscd001 bit is the part I'm a little uncertain about. I used to be pretty good with that kind of stuff but it was a long time ago! However, that's exactly the way that I would try to deal with it.

Let us know the results

Hi, thanks again, up and running, 99% no problems, the 1% I have listed as a new post.

Cool