CD-Rom not working in DOS

[rmill9681]

Trying to install windows 98SE. P233MMX, ASUS XV97. Deleted old partitions. Created new primary partition, formated c: Tried to boot from cd rom and it said failure next to the drive name. The BIOS recognizes the drive and I tried booting with a setup disk and cd-rom support enabled, but it I couldn't access the drive. I copied system files to the c: and installed the driver that came with the drive. It still will not access it. I know the drive worked before and I haven't removed anything from the system. Any thoughts?

[deddard]

Are you sure you're trying to access the correct drive?
During initial installation, the system moves the drive letter along 1, so drive D becomes drive E.
Try changing to E (if your normal assignment for CD is D) and run setup.

[slim]

Hi,

Have made sure that you have got a file called MSCDEX.exe on your computer ?

Slim

[James Bond 007]

Have you tried booting from floppy?From the Dos startup menue look twards the bottom right by pressing shift-F8 you will install the necessary drivers to boot and install Windows from CD. (most likely you will answer Yes to all questions)Now go back to the Biose and boot from CD. Windows will now begin installing.

[rmill9681]

yes i have the file mscdex.exe on the computer. I copied it to the c: (when not using ramdrive this would be my main drive correct?) and I used the cd rom driver installation utility to install the driver to c:. I have not tried hitting F8 yet. So I'll give that a shot

[Sylvander]

Print this
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;135174
and read it.

I think that until you have Windows installed the only way you will be able to access the CD-Drive is using [in your case, since you have one] the Windows 98 startup disk.
You're going to use the DOS operating system on the startup floppy and DOS is going to use the generic drivers on that disk.
Where the generic drivers on the Windows 98 startup disk are suitable for your drive [and they usually are], you should be able to run a file on a disk in the drive provided there is no hardware problem.
When it doesn't work, don't be too quick to assume a hardware problem.
A typical cause of trouble is that you have two HDD's and the disk is in a drive other than the one you are trying to access.
Remember that a "RAM-Drive" is created and this sets the drive letters back by one. Also the CD-drive jumpered as master is lettered first, then the one jumpered as slave.
You must use the correct [assigned] drive letter in the DOS command.