Laser 84 Posting Whiz

It sounds like your CDRom drive is the problem since it's having trouble reading the cd and you've confirmed that another system reads the cd fine. I'd try another cdrom drive.

You can download boot floppies from Microsoft
if you can't boot from CD.

Laser 84 Posting Whiz

Just not enough horsepower Jack. I've seen specks on 52x cdr's that want a minimum P3 700!!; The 64MB ram sounds about right but it should be DDR or PC100/133 not 72pin edo.