Windows 95 CD-ROM Driver Help!
Hey guys. I was trying to set up an old laptop (Gateway Solo 5300, Pentium III) with Windows 98 SE. However, I have been unable to locate CD-ROM drivers that work with my CD-ROM drive in DOS. The issue with my laptop is, it can only house EITHER a CD-ROM or floppy drive, but not both. So I can't have my boot disk and a CD-ROM in at the same time. My CD-ROM works under Windows XP, but it refuses to work under Windows 95. Since I couldn't use CD-ROM, I installed Windows 95 off of floppy, but it still won't detect my CD-ROM! I try the new hardware wizard, but that won't detect it! Windows 95 does detect my IDE controller, but not the drive itself.
In the boot menu, it is described as an ATAPI CD-ROM drive.
Just to be clear, I installed the Windows 95 RTM floppy disk version downloaded off of this website (not DMF, I downloaded the 1.44MB version).
Does anyone have any idea what to do to get my CD-ROM drive working under Windows 95/98? Will it work under 98 and I just have to install from floppy?
Comments
Hpefully you still have XP on it.
Start XP, go to device manager and have a look at the exact device description/name and the filename of the driver used.
With this information I could go on searching a solution.
I have exact the same Problem with an OmniBook P2 and an IDE-Floppy.
Luckily I have a dock for it to put the CD-Drive in the dock and leave the floppy in laptop.
Unfortunately I had to take off XP. But I think I can copy the i386 directory of the CD-ROM to the hard drive using my PowerMac G4.
However, I could always look for a driver based on the model number of the CD-ROM drive.
It's more a test than a solution:
Take a Win98 Boot floppy (the one you can make yourself using Control Panel -> Software) and copy both MSCDEX.EXE and BTCDROM.SYS to C:\DOS\ (create it using MD, if nonexistant). Install MSCDEX.EXE in AUTOEXEC.BAT and BTCDROM.SYS in CONFIG.SYS (use a tutorial here because they need commandline arguments). When done, reboot into DOS Mode and reinstall Win 98 from CD-ROM.
You may also try to boot from the FreeDOS boot disk that's on Ultimate Boot CD and see if it has a driver which would work with your drive.
Or you can use a installer and install it on to the hard disk
Just as a note:
There are no dedicated drivers for every single drive. Almost every IDE drive will work with almost every IDE driver, almost every SCSI drive will work with almost every SCSI driver.
If one IDE driver does not work, try another 2 or 3. If more than one driver is not working you are "in luck" to have a very special case...
If you have this case it might be worth to search for the model number. Otherwise, like said, almost every driver will do.
Maybe you try a somewhat newer bootdisk than Win95 (which has no CD drivers IIRC), try Win98SE or FreeDOS.
sorry i ment use it then install it on a more modern computer then remove the hard drive then put it in your older computer