Generally you would go into CMOS and tell it to boot to the CD first...
Some older equipment may not boot to the CD and would require a boot floppy with CD drivers...
Thong_Ispector
Practically a Master Poster
638 posts since Nov 2004
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Go into bios and detect Hard Drive if computer is old enought it will be there if its newer it will auto detect so skip that part , say yes to what it detects for bot primary and secondary ,save and exit .then get a win98 boot disk from http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm and boot computer with cdrom support ,at the a:\ prompt type in FDISK if you think you need to create a new partition ,if not with the win98 cd in the cd rom type SETUP .
caperjack
I hate 20 Questions
13,069 posts since Aug 2003
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caperjack has the right idea. You need to change the boot order in BIOS setup to make CD-ROM the first boot device.
If your copy of Windows 98 doesn't allow for booting from the CD (some don't) then you'll need a Windows 98 startup diskette to boot from, and you can download the contents of one. Another way to approach the job is to find a friend who has a Windows 98 system, and make a startup diskette on that.
Catweazle
Grandad
4,335 posts since Mar 2004
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I've had some problems getting my computer(s) to look at the CD drive. I've installed Windows98SE without a bootdisk too. The trick is forcing your BIOS/CMOS to check your CD drive for bootable images. There was this tiny little option at the bottom of every boot sequence thing that said something to the effect of "Emergency Boot Sequence Enable/Disable".
I switched it to Disable. Pretty much, if it can't find a bootimage on any drives after a surface scan, it just craps out and defaults to the Primary Boot Sequence. Disabling the EBS forces it to scan any and all drives for bootimages.
indienick
Junior Poster in Training
71 posts since Aug 2005
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Some newer cd drives can't be detected because the windows 98 cd does not have the drivers for them. To fix this try an older cd drive or one that the drivers can be loaded in DOS mode.
Gregh ,you should check the date on the post above yours ,no response since aug /05 ,im sure thatthe problems was fixed of they through the system out the window by now lol
caperjack
I hate 20 Questions
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