Hello:

I purchased some old business computers, which had the hard drives erased. All had CD-ROM drives, and I was told that if you use a Windows 98 Start-Up disk, it will provide CD-ROM support, so someone can use the CD-ROM Drive to install their operating system of choice.

This seems to be correct for one of the two computers I tried this with; it had a generic CD-ROM drive.

It did not work with the second, which has a Creative "Quad Speed" drive. I do not want to have to switch out the CD-ROM drive, or open the computer to find out the model. I did find a driver, sbide20.exe (sbide.sys), which I am hoping will work, but I do not know how to get the computer and start up disk to try that driver. I did copy it to the Windows 98 Start-Up disk.

I am getting this error -
... was able to load diagnostic tools to drive D.
Device Driver not found: MSCD001
No Valid CDROM device drivers selected.

Then it returns to an A: prompt

I hope this is the right forum. I am a novice on this subject matter and really need some detailed help. I do not know anything about DOS or Device Drivers.

Any help would be appreciated!

Try downloading one of the bootdisks from www.bootdisk.com. Should be able to find one that has CL cd-rom drivers on it.


HTH

OK, so you copied the driver file to the 98 boot disk but this is only half the job. You have to install it (or try to). If you know nothing about DOS then this is where you start learning!

Where did DOS suddenly come into this? When you boot Windows 98 you are actually booting DOS (version 7, I think). On a hard disk, DOS starts first but then runs Windows almost immediately. Win98 won't fit on a floppy so the boot disk simply stays in DOS. Those diagnostic tools you mentioned are in a compressed file on the floppy. They get uncompressed into a virtual disk created in memory (a RAMdrive). This is the mysterious drive D.

When any version of DOS boots, it looks for two files: CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. It's looking for drivers to install and commands to execute. If you Explore your boot disk on a working PC you should find CONFIG.SYS. It's a text file so you can use Notepad to read and edit it. You'll have to tell Notepad to view "All Files" because it defaults to seeing only those with the extension TXT. DON't use any kind of word processor; this will surely make a complete mess.

All kinds of drivers get loaded by CONFIG.SYS. Study the way in which the existing CDROM drivers get loaded then add a line to install your own. That, in a nutshell, is about it. Test your modified boot disk by booting from it and see if your new driver finds the CDROM.

Go to

http://www.oldstuff.myagora.net/powerload/bootdisk.htm

scroll down to

Custom Bootdisks

OLDBIOS CD BOOTDISK

For older BIOS's Due to incompatibility with CD-booting technical specifications, "El Torito" standard, no-emulation method of CD Boot. Try using this disk. This program will create a floppy disk to work around this problem. You boot the PC from this floppy and then a small program on the floppy switches boot to a CD-ROM device Note: this program will be useless if your PC can normally boot from installation CDs. - Works with 95% of IDE CD-ROM's

Or try

CDROM GOD

Has 50 CDRom drivers

I think I have a simple solution to this....the cd rom is bad....cable, connection or so forth...it's a hardware problem. I use the custom bootdisk at bootdisk.com on the creative drives with no problems.
Dan

Hi you need to load a file mscdex.exe in your autoexec.bat but the syntax is
mscdex /d:Mscd001 and in your config.sys you need to loada device driver for your cd rom the syntax is

device=****.sys /d:mscd001

For example I use a device driver oakcdrom.sys which comes with win98 so I include the following commands in the autoexec and config files of my bootable floppy.

autoexec.bat ----->mscdex.exe /d:mscd001
config.sys ----->device=oakcdrom.sys /d:mscd001

just make sure both files are there and you will not get the same error.

CD ROM GOD
OLDBIOS CD BOOTDISK
downloads; working
http://www.oldfiles.streamlinetrial.co.uk/powerload/bootdisk.htm

I have the same cd-rom
but I don't have problem with installing win98
why don't you try using a win98 cd!?

first take the time to determine the cdrom model/interface your system uses for a system that has a creative sound card or another vendors sound card cdrom interface using the sound card's interface is NOT "standard" IDE. you must use a driver specific for the sound cards cdrom ide port to activate it before windows/dos will be able to use the cdrom.

if the drive is connected directly to the motherboards IDE ports and the win98 boot floppy fails to see the unit or sees a unit but will not work with it then the unit is most likely defective.