dont ya just hate computers !!!!!!

[marcus]

im having real problems with a computer I picked up cheaply for my daughter today.

she turns 7 this week so i thought I would get a comp for her so she can start learning them properly (instead of being on mine all the time)

so I went and bought a real cheap one for $150 and I only needed the tower as I hade everything else from spares from my past computers.

now what has really annoyed me is that it wont recognize the cd rom so i cant load an old copy of windows 98 I have on disk onto it.

ive tried like crazy all afternoon and into the night to work it out and it comes down to the brilliant bootable disk of windows 98 deciding not to detect the driver for the cd rom.

Ive done searches all over the net and there seems to be endless people who are having or have had the same problem.

its really frustrating as I cant seem to work out what i need to do to get it to work and Ive tried all the things Ive come across.

does anyone know how I can get the thing to recognise my cd rom ????

[Mackmot]

Let your daughter do it, its a steep learning curve but hey she needs to learn sometime.

[Aysedasi]

Haven't you ever made a Win98 boot disk (floppy)? I always keep one handy, even though I now use XP. If you run that it will allow you to re-boot with CD rom support. Someone you know must have a 98 boot floppy lying around......surely?

[Tim Falce]

I'm assuming there is no OS loaded on this PC.
Go into the bios and make the CDrom the first boot drive instead of the floppy drive. If you can't do that I can email you a win 98 start program, copy it to floppy and do it that way.

[Aysedasi]

It would be unusual surely for the BIOS not to have the CD available to boot from, if not as first boot, as second or third after floppy or hard drive? Good point about email though (I must be getting old). Many of us, I guess, can email you a zipped boot disk - all you then need is to extract the files and put them on a floppy and boot with that....

[Speck]

Check your BIOS settings first. Make sure the BIOS is set to recognize all the IDE connections. Also, try swapping the IDE cables, drives, other components with ones that are known to be working.

You could also try to use the CDROM drive in your own computer just to install the OS, and any other essentials.

If you need a bootdisk, then try this website:

http://www.bootdisk.com/

[marcus]

thanks guys but its all good I worked it out

can you believe it was a simple problem in the Bios with regards to the CD Rom , one easy press of a button and my rom fired up

alls good , the comp works fine and my daughter is over the moon about it

thanks for the help though

[Aysedasi]

Good news marcus - glad to hear you're up and running now (or your daughter is!).