Hoping someone could help.. my first time trying to install Windows on a laptop.
I picked up a Toshiba 420 CDS laptop. It looks like the drive was formatted. It has MSDOS_6 . I finally was able to access the 'Setup' by inserting a floppy(downloaded from Toshiba).In the Setup, the ONLY options I can choose from for the BOOT PRIORITIES are FDD+HDD or HDD+FDD. (no options for a CD drive) I have it set for FDD+HDD. I've installed, from a floppy, the DOS driver for the CDROM (again from Toshiba). I'm trying to install Windows 98SE (from an original disk). I've tried booting with a Windows 98SE 'rescue disk' PLUS the Windows 98SE disk so that I can get it to recognize the CD drive for the installation. NOTHING happens ... When looking in the CD drive DIR, I get this information (D: MS-RAMDRIVE... 10 files 497,642 bytes.) I've put different disk in that D: drive and get the same results. I even tried DIR on that drive even with nothing in the drive (empty) and get the same results. The light comes on when I ask for{ D:\>dir }so I know the drive does works. All the above drivers, I've installed today, are for this model.. I'm hoping there's a solution because it's a nice little laptop.. Thanks, in advance, for any help.. :o)

Usually if it is a swappable drive it won't ever be recognized in dos.
Swappable drive meaning that you can have either a floppy or a cd-rom drive in that space. My ThinkPad laptop works the same way. If I have the cd-rom drive in and go to the bios setup and test it, it works just great, but it will not boot from it or even recognize it in dos no matter what I do. What I had to do was get a laptop adapter (about $8) and swap the laptop hard drive into my main pc and then copy the windows directory onto it from there. After that I was able to boot with a standard boot disk and install windows.

Hi Jeannette, Terri, hi everyone,

OK, I believe it if Terri says it but I never met inaccessible CD-Drive on laptops (Dell, IBM, CompaQ).

So, I understand you can't find anything about CD in boot sequence Bios setup!
First, try the standard way:
- download a good "Windows 98 SE Bootup floppy disk" from Terri's website
- boot on that bootdisk and chose CD option!

Had you a swappable CD-or-Floppy Drive, then you would have to copy the content of the floppy onto the hard disk.

HTH

Have a good day,
Gérard from Paris, France

Hi Terri:
No, it's not a swappable drive. A: drive is on one side and the CD drive on the other.
I'm using the same logic as if it's a regular desktop PC...but I can see that there's obviously something that I'm missing...:o)

Hi Frenchie:
I did try booting with a good 'Windows 98SE bootable disk' PLUS the 'Windows 98SE CD' as mentioned in my problem description and NOTHING happens....Like I said above, when I ask to see the Directory in the D: drive i.e D:\>DIR
I get information BUT not the information from the 'Windows 98SE' disk sitting in the D: drive. I get the SAME information if the drive was EMPTY...The disk is NOT being read. ..

The boot disc creates a RAM drive, which moves the CD drive up one letter to "E", or sometimes to L or R. When computer boots up, the drive letter will show briefly.

Thank you Dave01 for your reply. I watched carefully as you said and it did show me briefly the drive. (D:) I also noticed this message " PCI READ CONFIGURATION ERROR" just after I chose No.3 for CDROM support in DOS. This message may be the problem but I don't know how to fix it. Sure hope someone has an idea. Thanks again. :o)

boot from CD

Sometimes the generic cdrom drivers on the bootdisk don't work for laptops.

But when booting from a bootdisk, you should be getting a screen message about the cdrom drivers loading (or failing to load). If they load then mscdex will also load and will specify the drive letter. If they don't load, mscdex will give a message that it didn't load because the cdrom drivers weren't found (meaning they didn't load). So are you getting anything like that?

As dave01 said, d: is a ramdrive when booting from a bootdisk so don't bother searching there for cd files.

Hi Jeannette, Terri, Gérard, dave01, DAVEINCAPS, hi everyone

"OK, I believe it if Terri says it but I never met inaccessible CD-Drive on laptops (Dell, IBM, CompaQ)."
I can add that I haven't encountered that with Toshiba laptop's/CD-ROM drives.

"Sometimes the generic cdrom drivers on the bootdisk don't work for laptops."
In my experience that is the case with Toshiba laptop's/CD-ROM drives.
You could try this bootdisk, Toshiba Bootdisk Image.
(http://www.dse.nl/~thecount/BootTos.exe)

Download the image file, to the desktop or to a place on the hard drive where you know you can find it. ;-)
Insert a empty floppy disk into drive A:, and double-click on the downloaded file, read the comment :-), and press the [Enter]key to extract the contents to the floppy disk. When it's done, you have created yourself a Windows 98 SE bootdisk, with Toshiba CD-ROM support. :-)

It's a modified Windows 98 SE bootdisk, modified in that way that I have added the Toshiba CD-ROM driver (Toscdrom.sys) to the disk. Also adjusted the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files, so that it will only load the Toshiba driver for CD-ROM support under DOS.

Another addition to the disk is the Ted.bat batch file, I created that to help out Ted (he posted here in March 2003).
He has a Toshiba laptop with swappable drives.
(Not posting the link to the thread here, as it may get things mixed up.)

So you, Jeannette, can ignore the comment shown when you double-click on the self-extracting image file. At least the part that reads:
"When one needs... ...before running Ted.bat."

If your laptop's hard drive has only one partition and is formatted, you'll get a D: drive as a MS-Ramdrive, and your CD-ROM drive will most likely be assigned driveletter E:.

Put your Windows 98 CD-ROM in the drive, and run the setup from the appropriate drive letter. Assuming that the above meets yours, you would run the setup from E:.

Hope this helps, keep us posted.

Greetz from The Netherlands,
The Count

Thank you ALL for your help. Each one of you gave me great information..'The Count' solved my problem. His download was exactly what I needed. I've searched countless hours for the solution from Toshiba's web site, the Web, and this forum. 'The Count', you can't imagine the excitement when I saw DOS loading the drivers needed; designed for this Toshiba. I now have my Windows installed and ready to go. I had to remind myself to breathe :o) Big (( ))hug and XXX from a green-eyed blond. ;o)

Hi Jeannette, Terri, Gérard, dave01, DAVEINCAPS, hi everyone

"...you can't imagine the excitement when I saw DOS loading the drivers needed..."
I would have loved to be there on that very moment. :-,

The Toshiba driver loaded, is a general Toshiba driver designed for (all?) Toshiba CD-ROM drives.
I've used this driver for several different Toshiba laptop models, and always with success. :-)

"I had to remind myself to breathe"
Glad you did.

I'm glad that I could be of assistance to you, and thank you for getting back to us. It's mostly appreciated.

And as I have a habit of doing in regards to Toshiba threads...
You might want to add this link to your favorites.
Satellite Pro 420CDS
You can filter on Operating System and Category.

I'm well aware that it's, not offensive, but inappropriate and therefor won't ask for proof. ;-)

Greetz,
The Count (()):**

Thanks again 'The Count' for the extra Toshiba link. Looks like a lot of great information.

No problem to prove..:o) I really am a g.e.b. ;)
Not the place on this great forum.

Best to you all,