I purchased a used Canon Innova 475CDS Laptop and when I got it there was noOS.
Before I found out there was no OS my son and I messed with the BIOS setup
and also was in the FDISK. I received a Win98 startup floppy and a Win98, new
with license, OS on a CD-ROM. I finally got the floppy startup loaded on C
drive but I can not load the OS from the CD. When I boot with the floppy it
will go to the C drive. Then I have to shut down to change the floppy to the
CD. When I try to boot up with the CD it asked me if I want to start the
computer with CD-ROM support, or without CD-ROM support. No matter which I
select all I can get is A drive not ready. ABORT,
RETRY, FAIL? If I type A or R the curser just goes to the bottom of the
screen. If I type an F it will take me to C drive. At the C drive prompt
anything I type to try and access the CD-ROM I get A drive not ready.
I know there are some files on the C drive and some on D drive. With the
floppy in I can access A drive and do a Dir/w and see files on the floppy. My
owners manual says I cannot change the floppy and CD without shutting the
computer off. I think my son and I may have screwed something up in the BIOS
setup. I don't know anything about BIOS or FDISK or installing an OS system.
When I first went into the FDISK the first page had 2 paragraphs on it. The
first paragraph said if my system memory was larger than 2 GB I could do
wonderful things. The second paragraph said "WARNING" if you choose to do
number 1 you may have trouble. Well, my son choose number 1. I don't know if
that's what causing my problems or not.

Hi;
I would suggest the following. It sounds that you have been in the bios. As the system starts up, go to the bios (usually the delete key). Choose default settings and pick it. Choose yes to save these settings.

The system should reboot (make sure that the A: drive starts first), make sure the startup floopy is in the floopy drive, let the startup disk work, choose CD Rom support. It sounds like you have two partitions, so the CD drive would most likely be the E: drive. Once you get the A: prompt, type "e:" (without the quotes).

This should bring you to the CD drive. Try typing "setup" (without the quotes) and see if the CD starts the setup process.

All this assumes that you have a full version of Win 98, not the upgrade version, which requires an earlier version of a Microsoft product to verify that you can use the Upgrade version.

Also, I hope that you have the original CD sleeve that the Win98 CD came in that has your product ID on it (on the back cover), as win 98 setup will ask fore this ID number.

Good luck!