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youpickistick · Member Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Posts: 1

I have two old laptops and i can only use the floppy or cd...not at the same time.....cant swap them out while computer is on or it will freeze.
My question is hiw do you make it to where your cd is bootable because i am trying to do a new install of 98 but cant cause after running the setup disk I pull out the floppy and put in the ccd but it will not read the disk.No way to change bios to make it bootable.....i had found a away to copy files so when you rebooted the cd booted but i lost the printout i had and cant find it again on the net.

ldiaco · Forum Regular Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 13

hmmmm..... I am far from an expert at computers, i'll be the first to admit that, but the fact that no one else has responded to your post tells me that even the experts are kinda stumped. Why don't you post up your laptop makeup (the stuff inside, Ram, CPU etc.). Can you still work inside the Operating system? Do you have USB ports? Do you feel comfortable with opening the thing up (it might be helpful)? It might be worth upgrading to XP pr at least Win 2000, because I am pretty sure Win 2000 doesn't use a floppy disk, you just need the CD. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. frown

nemisis_tfc · Forum Regular Joined: 09 Mar 2007 Posts: 26

this one is going to be sticky

from the info you provide im guessing you are using a not so legit copy of windows 98. unfortuinatly the copy you have isnt CD bootable

what you could try doing is copying the entire contents of the floppy onto the hard drive in dos and rebooting? i have no idea if this will work but if it does it will put you into a dos environment where you can get the to the setup

even easier make a new cd and make it bootable as well but im guessing you are about as good as me at doing that or you wouldnt be posting

alternatives are buy a USB to ide converter and copy the CD contents to tHDD or buy a usb cd-rom and do it that way
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DCSE mobile dell engineer

Please note that i am a contract engineer, the views or opinions i express on this board are not that of dell computers LTD and no warranty is implied on any suggested fixes