[valdaviper1]

hello,
I have an old dell 7500 laptop and I recently formatted my hard drive.
I set the BIOS settings back to factory default boot order,(floppy, hard drive, cd)
I am using a win98 boot disk and a win98 se cdrom to try to install win98se.
the problem is that my cdrom is shown as being there, and connected.
But when i go and type in the cd drives name and ANY file (E:\setup)
it says it cannot read from drive or drive is not ready.

also even if i put : ( e:\>chkdsk )
it says:
( CDR101: Not ready reading drive E
Abort, Retry, Fail?
)

i am sure my cdrom drive is E
and this same thing has happend in the past, but last time i just got lucky and it decided to work one day. this really ticked me off, since out of 50 tries it only read the disk once, and i was able to install win98se and upgrade to xp. But now i just can't seem to get it to work, I think its a problem with the hardware connection between the cdrom/floppy and its dock, but im probably wrong and dont really want to go in the laptop.
ANY IDEAS OR SUGGESTIONS WOULD BE GREAT APPRECIATED.
THANKS

[Crash&Burn]

Isn't "E" the RAM Disk that is created by 98's Setup?
Can you do a DIR? Does the light come on the CD? Can it read any other CD's ?

[valdaviper1]

no, e: is the cdrom drive, d: is the ramdrive created by it
also yes, the light comes on, starts blinking, and I can hear the cd moving inside, but then the light stays on and dos boots from the floppy up to the point where it requires the cd. by then the cd rom drive is nonexistent.
DIR doesn't work on it because when i type in : e:\>dir
this comes up: CDR101: Not ready reading drive E
Abort, Retry, Fail?
also no, it cannot read any other cd's so i know its not a problem with the disk.
thanks

[Crash&Burn]

It wouldn't attempt to read if the pin connection was off, so really, sounds like defective hardware.
You might try cleaning the interior with compressed air, or just replace it.

[valdaviper1]

alright thanks