[NTLUG:Discuss] OT - laptop, floppy and CD share a bay, other OS

[Alvin Goats]

> The box was running NT, but the hard drive has been repartitioned using 
> fdisk from a Win98 boot disk - had to use delpart to delete partitions 
> first, and the 300+MB machine special partition has been saved.
> The problem is the CD-ROM/floppy situation - only has one bay, and
> (1) if the floppy is in, loading a CD driver fails because it can't find 
> the CD
> (2) if the CD is in, it won't run because there isn't any driver.


First, get the CD drivers on a floppy disk.

Boot with the floppy drive in and put the drivers in a top level folder
(C:\Crap as an example).

Try to install the driver without the CD in the bay (this works most of
the time, but not always).

Reboot with the CD in the drive bay.

First, see if it recognizes the CD drive. If not, install the driver
from the C:\Crap directory again.
This will catch those CD setups that have to have the drive in the bay
so it can find what drive letter to assign to it.

Reboot and see if everything works well.


Alternatively, go into the BIOS and see if there are any settings for
the CD and floppy you might play with. Laptops have a totally custom
BIOS that actually does specific things with the hardware that is HARD
installed vs. towers and desktops that who knows what type of hardware
will eventually be on the machine. 


Hope this helps!

Alvin