Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Computer Problems-- help please

I'm currently redoing a friends laptop for her and after formatting the stupid thing. I go and try to install the os but the thing doesn't see her rom drive even with a win 98 boot disk. I cant find the drivers for either one of her cdrom for her laptop. Can anyone direct me to the drivers for either oen of these drives?

Torisan CD-R/RW model # CDW-U4424
TEAC DV-28E Model Ver -A96

Solution:
1) Boot disk for Win98 SE should have an option to boot with CD-ROM. If its not there then you will have to find a floppy that has it. I know Windows Me and Win98 SE have it for sure
or
2) go to this site www.driverguide.com and download MS-DOS drivers for CD-ROM and install them when you are in dos
or
3) use windows NT or XP to boot from CD-ROM. i would suggest installing win XP, unless laptop is very slow.

Did you go into the BIOS and set the boot order to boot from CD first?

BTW, what's the processor on that thing? I'd recommend if it's at least a PII machine to load Windows 2000 on there. Win 98 and Me were too buggy.

ive done that and driverguide doesn't have the drivers for the roms nor using simalar drivers for the rom seem to work either. When I try to boot from the rom it says invalid systems disk.. it doesn't matter if i use 98, me, or 2k pro.

Im starting to think the drive is shot or something. btw is a 750mhz with 32mf ram gateway

format C: /s
I believe thats the correct format then just copy the win98 folder from the CD to a file you create on the hard drive and run setup from there.

I think thats right, I havent done it in awhile...

CD-ROM will only boot for Winows2000 and up
and when using a floppy to boot, make sure that boot disk is ok and no corruption.
Do u have access to win 98 or ME to create another boot-up floppy??? if you do, create it and try again.
computer has only 32mb of ram, it would be to slow for XP. it needs at least 32mb for core and not to mention other services

Well ive come to the conclusion that its not the cd rom in the gateway laptop and that it has something to do with the harddrive itself.

Ive reformatted the HD while it was in another laptop and yet i still get the same error message. And I have done his laptop for him several times before.

It says that I need to use a vaild system disk when i try to boot from the windows cd and when I boot with no cd it just says no OS installed.

I Will try making a new boot disk with a brand new floppy and see if that helps any.

First thing is that if a computer can boot directly from the CD because that setting is available in the BIOS, it doesn't matter what condition the HD is or if it's there at all.

So, first question... can you set the boot order in the BIOS so that the CD ROM is first?

If not, then the next issue is... does this notebook have swapable floppy / CD ROM drives? If you can only have one in at a time, you're going to have to install Windows from another external source, so that'll take a bit of thinking.

Check the boot order first.

With the laptop there should have came diskette with the cdrom drive drivers on it, those have to be copied to the harddrive first before you can actually do anything with the cdrom. If she doesn't have the disk you should be able to go to the gateway website and download them and boot to a boot up disk. I know this because i worked for gateway for 3 years.

If you know the SN of the computer go here, if not just go the second link.
gateway online support
drivers

I got the computer fixed. I ended up installing Windows 2k pro onto the box after she bought more ram for it. BTW she didn't have any disk for the computer nor did gateway have anything for the roms that she had. Thanks for your help guys.