I am relatively new to PC repair, but I work in a busy shop. I am amazed at how often a certain problem occurs, and hope someone here can explain it. Suppose I have a 5-year old computer (give or take) running Win95 or 98. I don't see any need to give hardware specifics, because the problem seems to occur with many types of PC's. I decide it's necessary to reload the OS, so I repartition and format.

I boot from a floppy that has CD-ROM support, but I can't see (access) the CD Drive. In some cases, I can correct the problem by swapping out the CD Drive for another kind. Why does this only work sometimes?

What's worse, sometimes I can see the CD Drive OK, but when I try to run Setup.exe, I get an error message that tells me it can't be run from a DOS prompt. Is there some magic formula for overcoming this problem? Was I absent that day in A+ class?

What you are running into is the Generic Cd-rom driver that is loaded from the win boot disk.
Oak-cdrom sys It is not always compatible with many drives.

That message about can’t run from dos prompt is the normal message you get when you try to run a windows program in dos. ( Win98se upgrade setup)

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To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !

I have to disagree Rick, win 95 or 98 setup can be run from a DOS prompt, the machine I'm typing on was installed from the win98SE upgrade CD in exactly that manner. OK actually the cab files were copied to a hard drive first, but same thing...

I think what happened is you tried to run the setup.exe that's in the root directory of the CD rather than switching to the win98 directory. That one might only run from windows. The setup.exe located at X:\win98> (X being the CD drive letter) will run from DOS, otherwise installing Windows would not be possible in many cases. Example...someone deletes system.dat and user.dat, and/or other system files, no registry/system files, and you want to reinstall without actually formatting. No way to do it from windows...(been there, done that...wasn't a happy camper...ok WHAT did I delete????)

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Thanks, Paleo Pete. I may indeed have been running a setup.exe other than the one in the WIN9x folder. I'll double-check that. But what about the CD-ROM issue? I've tried loading more than just the Oak driver. I've tried mscdex.exe. Would a bad (or wrong) driver explain why a different CD drive sometimes works (or sometimes doesn't)?

This CD-ROM issue is really the main problem, and very frustrating. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/mad.gif

Rick was dead on target on that part, some drives just don't like the generic drivers on the start up disk. Many of the proprietary drives controlled by sound cards instead of the IDE controller also won't work with the start up disk drivers.

The only way I've found around it is to swap it for a CD drive that will work, then swap back to the original after the installation is done.

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Pete

I couldn’t resist the temptation to try it.
I booted using my startup disk with cd-rom support and inserted my Win98 SE upgrade disk.
Again I got the same message . ( requires Windows to run Setup.exe)
From Both setup programs. ( Root and in Win98)
I should also note that the top of the disk case reads. ”For Users Of Win98"

Just another copy/bootleg protection scheme from MS http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif
I’d bet there are a number of variations of the upgrade disk

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To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !