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...

Yes i know i have to maek it boot the cd first, but even if i do that, it wont see the cd drive or eomthing similar, and it wont start teh setup program. I can get the cd drive to work by installing dos and editing af ew files, but the only thing wrong with that is when i install dos it changes my partitions, makes it only 1 2gb partition on FAT16, and it wont even see the other 58gb or my other harddrive. Is there anyway to partition my harddrive after i install windows?

You need to go to setup then cmos and tell it to go to cd rom first.Them go into bios and and where it says drive a,page down and tell it there is not one.If you can get to where you can type,type D or E for example,mine is E drive so I would put E:setup and it will setup from the disk.That is only when I would boot with the floppy first though.But do those 2 things in setup and it will go to the cd rom. I just dod that myself a few days ago,I have no a drive so I had to redirect it.

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 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.

if you need to install windows 98se from a cd, you need to go to Http://www.bootdisk.com and get a windows 98 boot disk and then, go to you target system turn it on and enter the BIOS SETUP. there you will need to edit your boot sequence from wheat ever it is to floppy (A:) then cd (D:) and then your harddisk. when you are done with this you will need to exit BIOS SETUP and be sure to save changes. then turn off your computer insert your Windows 98se boot disk and power on. then when it boots into a command you will insert your Windows 98se cd the type D:\setup.exe into the command and continue with the prompts. if the command says invalid drive you will need to turn off your computer remove all disks of all sorts and turn you system back on and enter BIOS SETUP again and make sure your cd-rom is installed in your BIOS SETUP and repeat the above steps.

hope this helps!
-Zach Boyce
Age 14 smartist computer
child in the southeastern Minnesota
area

if you need further help repost

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.

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