I'm assuming that your cd/dvd rom drive worked before you reformatted your computer. Did you use this same drive that is installed right now to load an operating system cd to format the hard drive? Does the bios recognize the drive, but your operating system does not? Are you able to boot off of a cd? Does If the bios doesn't recognize the cd/dvd rom drive then you would you need to check cable/power/jumper settings, not driver issues. If the cd/dvd drive worked fine with the bios before, and no hardware changes were made, then there should be no reason why it wouldn't work now.
What makes you believe that it doesn't work? Have you tried to Boot from the CD and had no success?
Was the system a new one in 97/98, or a secondhand unit? Is the BIOS configured to use CD-ROM as '1st boot device'? Does the BIOS POST information indicate that the drive is detected?
clasher, for starters could you please click on the 'Edit' button at bottom of your post to add further comments, instead of making multiple posts one after another. Or better still, wait until you've typed out your entire comment before clicking on 'Submit'. This is a forum, not irc, mate.
Next, which version of Windows are you trying to install at the moment? If it's Windows 98, what are you trying to install it from. You should be trying to boot the system from a Windows 98 Startup diskette, which would have mscdex.exe included on it.
If you are trying to install Windows XP from a Windows CD, then you should be making changes in BIOS to allow the system to boot directly from the CD.
BIOS is the 'Setup' routine of the machine itself. You usually access it by pressing <Delete> when the machine is powering up.
No one has posted to this discussion for at least three months. Please let old threads die and do not reply to them unless you feel you have something new and valuable to contribute that absolutely must be added to make the discussion complete. Otherwise, please start a new thread in this forum instead.