need help with laptop

[moonsocket]

ok..got a gateway laptop....lots of stuff installed so i say to myself "lets do a format and clean install"...well...format i do!!!
nice a clean!! but now i cant install windows.....i get it to boo to a c prompt but it keeps saying there may be a problem with my cdrom....does anyone have any idea how to fix this?

please help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[dcdomain]

Uhm, what kind of CD-Rom is it? Do you have the DOS PCMCIA drivers installed for your CD-Rom (unless of course it isn't a PCMCIA CD-Rom.

If it's not a notebook with an integrated CD-Rom, you can try doing what I did, get a notebook with one and swap the harddrives, copy the Win98 cd onto it or the i386 folder of Win2k, and install after swapping it back.

It's a lot of work and I recommend that as your last option...

 

[moonsocket]

the notebook has a cdrom swappable with floppy

 

[bluegi]

are you using a boot disk with cdrom support

 

[spamboy]

Just boot from the CD...

 

[IcemanJer]

<< Just boot from the CD... >>

Only if your copy of the CD is bootable.

And what's the error message that it's giving you about your CD-ROM?

 

[bacillus]

are you using a startup floppy to start up the laptop with cd drive support?
if you are &amp; the message that your cd1 drive cannot be found then you'll need to modify your startup floppy to include the cd drive dos drivers.

 

[coolVariable]

Socket:
You will have to boot with the floppy then copy the floppy to your c:\ and make c:\ bootable (of course you need to change all paths in config.sys and autoexec.bat).
Then power down, exchange floppy for CD-ROM!
Start up and now the CD-ROM will be found and poperly installed.

As far as I know DOS doesn't support hot-swappable drives!!!!!!

 

[moonsocket]

thanks for all the info!!
i found out why it wouldnt work...i needed specific drivers for the laptop cdrom
the windows ones didnt work

thanks!!

 

[moonsocket]

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!


now it keeps stalling when windows in installing!!!!!
any ideas?

 

[anime]

call their tech support
usually what i did before doing any clean windows install is to make emergency boot disk. format you hardrive with the disc and transfer the system from the floppy to your hdd plus all the files--once done swap the floppy with the cd-rom and reboot. it should detect the cd-rom and happy install.