Hello to all. I am very new to the board, however I have been studying and reading the PC Guide. I am currently taking a course in PC Repair and Upgrade and with the course I'm taking I've been reading the great stuff that I've found at PC Guide. I do have a problem that I can't seem to solve.

Last week my lovely wife brought home a Gateway Celeron P3, 500 Mhz, 128 mg of memory, 2 removeable hard drives. The manager of her tech support formatted the hard drive, so then I do not have a OS. I'm trying install Linux as the OS with no success. I'm using it just to help me in my studies, however I discovered the CD Rom driver is missing. I've googled till my eyes are bloodshot and have been communicating with a friend of mine about the problem. When I start up with a bootable disk and then select and try to use CD Rom I get this error:

Device driver not found: MSCD001
No valid CD Rom device drivers selected

I have gone into the autoexec.bat and config.sys and edited with no success. Perhaps someone can give me some pertinent information that will lead to success as well as a profitable learning experience for this newbie. Thanks for your help in advance.

When I start up with a bootable disk

What bootable disk ( I assume floppy) are you using?

Try downloading a new Win98SE boot image from www.bootdisk.com, and use that. The Win98SE boot disk includes generic drivers that will work with most CD drives.

Ok thanks I will try that. I had downloaded Win98OEM several days ago from bootdisk.com, but I will the one who recommended. Thanks for taking the time to share your advice.

This probably belongs in the Linux forum because I don't know if you can use a 9x floppy with DOS to install any Linux platform.

It appears the motherboard is too old to boot to a cd but you have not metioned what version of Linux you are trying to install either. Some details would help for the moment and then one of our Linux gurus could better assist you.

When you booted from the "Bootable Disk", was it a Win98 STARTUP floppy [which includes generic CD drivers and lots of other DOS prog's]?
Or did you make the mistake of using an ordinary DOS bootable floppy [which doesn't include CD drivers (or much of anything else either, just DOS +)]?

If you did use a Startup floppy, did you select "With CD-ROM support" as it was booting?

It was a win98 startup disk that I downloaded from bootdisk.com. Yes I select CD-Rom. I'm trying to install the latest version of linux found here (http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrakelinux/devel/iso/10.1/i586).

Your link is timing out but let's get the cd-rom issue done first.

Try another floppy and try another download of the bootdisk.

If that doesn't work, we'll need to check in BIOS to see if the cd-rom is recognised and forcing the BIOS to re-recognise it by forcing ESCD in BIOS by setting it to manual. Then, if the boot disks don't work, we'll try cabling or another drive. Hopefully it's not an ide channel or anything else on the motherboard that has 'gone south'.

Ok I've already tried another disk and I downloaded Win98SE bootdisk. I will say (and I honestly forgot to mention this) when I placed the last bootdisk in I got a message stating that my C drive need to be partitioned and that it was unable to read it. Like I mentioned earlier I am in the process of studying computer repair and upgrade, so everything I'm reading and answering questions to, it seems like when I run into real life experiences my brain goes into freeze.

The config.sys file should include this:
[CD]
device=himem.sys /testmem:_off [remove the _ before off]
device=oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
device=btdosm.sys
device=flashpt.sys
device=btcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
device=aspi2dos.sys
device=aspi8dos.sys
device=aspi4dos.sys
device=aspi8u2.sys
device=aspicd.sys /D:mscd001

The "CD ROM Device Driver" [the one (for the drive identified as mscd001) that cannot be found] is "oakcdrom.sys".
Is "oakcdrom.sys" included on the floppy?

None of that looks familiar and I will check it out.

I want to apologize for the delay but I had some other issues to take care of. I've gone and looked into the config.sys off of the bootable disk (Win98OEM) and yes it has the following:

[CD]
device=himem.sys /testmem:_off [remove the _ before off]
device=oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
device=btdosm.sys
device=flashpt.sys
device=btcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
device=aspi2dos.sys
device=aspi8dos.sys
device=aspi4dos.sys
device=aspi8u2.sys
device=aspicd.sys /D:mscd001

I've used the start up disk with no success. Any ideas or suggestions what can be done? Replace the cd rom?

Though I have no experience with Mandrake, the usual method of installing linux is to boot directly to the CD rom. To do this you must have the BIOS setup such that the CDROM is set to boot before the HDD in the boot order. Then reboot the computer with the CD in the tray.

If your BIOS wont allow this or you want to boot up the CD having first booted to a floppy you could try Smart Boot Manager from http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/download.html

I've never tried the binary Linux version only the binary DOS version. If you use the DOS version you need to first create a boot floppy (CDROM support not necessary) and then add both sbminst.exe and the support file cwsdpmi.exe to the floppy. Boot to the floppy and enter sbminst at the command prompt; this converts it into a boot manager so that the next time you boot to the same floppy you can choose CDROM from the options it gives you. If the DOS version doesnt work try the Linux one and remake a new boot manager diskette in like fashion. I don't think the Linux version is necessary if you are just booting up the installation CD but might be necessary if you wanted to use the floppy to boot up linux after it was installed on the HDD.

Its a great utility - though can be a bit tricky if you get into multiboot or multidrive scenarios. Be careful not to hide partitions by mistake - though you can always reboot to the diskette and unhide them.

Of course since you cannot recognise the CD drive from a boot disk from bootdisk.com (just about all of which have CD drivers on them) there could well be a problem with your physical CD drive or its cables, connectors, jumpers. If a known good CD drive cant be "seen" then double-check the connections/jumpers and consider using a new cable or slaving it to the HDD.

How to Modify the Windows Startup Disk with Other Device Drivers (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;188127)
CD-ROM Drives Requiring Real-Mode Drivers (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/131499/EN-US/)
I've never done this myself, so cannot give detailed instructions.
If still no success, even with Pauls suggestion, perhaps it would be easier to get and fit a more modern CD drive that works with the generic Windows Startup disk drivers?