The 98 setup should have a formatting piece. If not DOS cmds always works...

I've tried everything I could think of. I first verified that the boot options in setup listed the CD ROM first. I then inserted a Windows 98 CD. That didn't work. Next, I created a startup disk on my desktop and copied it to a CD. That didn't work. I downloaded a three disk NT startup collection and... you guessed it... it didn't work.

I'm begining to think that the CD ROM has issues. I got pissed off and let it go for about 30 minutes and that CD was spinning almost constantly. I thought I'd come back in the room and see it hovering.

Well, I suppose I could use it sor something else. Maybe a bacon and bagel press. If I knew how to record and post video, I'd make a short vid of my brother puttin' a few rounds in it.

You have it set to boot from the CD FIRST?

Yea, here'* the order
1) CD ROM
2) floppy drive
3) hard drive

It doesn't have a floppy drive installed and totally ignores the CD. I even tried to boot the thing with a boot CD and Windows 98 CD with the HD removed.

Operating system not found...


That'* all it would do.

Got another bootable CD you can try? Maybe an XP disc? I dont know if something as old as 98 is a true bootable CD.

I have a disk some where.....I have to look for it......But do you just need an administrator pass word to get in? I found a small unix based program on the web, but I think that you would need to be able to boot off of a floppy. I used it, put it in and booted the win2k machine and ran the program, and was able to delete the administrator password or change it to whatever I wanted with out having to know what the previous password that was set. And then you have full unadulterated access to the system.....It'* a security flaw in microsoft. I remember correctly it should work for NT, also because it worked for Win2K. I also think that it was designed from NT.

I have the following CD'* either right next to me or in this mess I call an office:
-Windows 98 second edition
-Windows 98 second edition updates (not sure what the difference is)
-Windows 95 full version (haven't tried yet)
-Windows Me upgrade (haven't triet yet)
-I downloaded all three setup disks for NT from here. These were self extracting files that copied information to the A floppy drive. I then copied the info to a CD.

In all CDs tried, the laptop went through it'* boot sequence and usually went straight to the OS loader screen; asking to choose between NT 4.0 & something else NT related. Sometimes a red box would appear indicating a problem with the partition but it flashed too quickly for me to read the whole thing. This is what makes me think that the CD drive is no good. Also, I heard that NT 4.0 will not allow boot from a disk but I think that is BS.

Lakeville, if you have a link for that admin password backdoor I'm willing to give that a try too. That will probably be the last thing I try before calling it quits on this thing. It'* certainy not a super computer.

Thanks for all of the responses and tips!

I'll try to dig it up...It was a while ago....I'll let ya know.