I have a TEAC CD224E  External CD ROM drive that is plug and play in EVERYTHING except WIN 98.  I am trying to up grade a laptop with WIN 98 to XP, but it has no internal CD drive.  "Chicken and egg" problem.  I need the external drive to do the up date, but I can't get 98 to read the CD drive unless I can put a driver in via the floppy drive.  Thanks!Welcome to computer will form. There are people here well-qualified to give you the exact answer to your question. Just be patient, they are volunteers and have nothing to gain except the satisfaction of helping you.
First of all, how did you get Windows 98 onto the machine without a CD-ROM drive?
Next question, does this machine have a floppy drive?
Also, how much free space you have on your hard drive? And what is the speed of the processor and how much RAM do you have available. Are you sure you want to up this machine to Windows XP? in my personal opinion it would be better to upgrade the machine to Windows 2000.
Yes, there is a way to get Windows 98 to recognize an external floppy disk or optical disk drive. Just wait a bit and someone will be with back here. Either me or somebody else.Computer is a Dell Inspiron 3000 laptop.  I came with WIN 98 loaded.  Has a floppy drive but no internal CD drive.
233 MHZ with 144 MEGS of RAM.  Trying to put together a low cost computer for a low income person for primarily email use, using stuff I have on hand.  Wanted to use XP Home because I have an unused one on hand and I don't have WIN 2000.  It will be a little slow with XP, but should be OK for email.  Also, 2000 seems to BECOMING more and more of an orphan.  All I need is to get WIN 98 to read the CD drive and I am good to go.  Thanks for your reply.Spend 30 Bucks for an internal drive...
Reason being not only did Win98 not have native CD drivers it also lacks support for USB...

Otherwise you could try searchinf for OakRom CD drivers...but how you are going to get them to load at bootup is another can of worms.

PS...with those specs XP is gonna be painfully slow.Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Just install a regular CD Drive.

But if youn insist, here are some more thooughts I had.

I still think Windows 2000 is a better choice for that machine to cut the processor speed and the limited amount of RAM you have available. Also, did you have some problem using Windows 98 to get on the Internet? As I RECALL, Windows 98 SP does a pretty good job on the Internet. The problem with windows 98 was a lack of drivers of the many kinds of hardware that's out there. Just because newer hardware was developed after Windows 98 and 98 SP were released.

As for being an orphan, Microsoft has many generic drivers that will work on many Windows operating systems except Windows 98. So that practically makes Windows 98 the orphan. Although some would say windows in me is the orphan. Of all that is besides the point.
Here's one method to install Windows XP, one that I've used, and I can safely recommend it to you. Here is the trick. You need the help of another computer. Which apparently you have.
What we do is somehow our remove a hard drive of a laptop and partition it so there is enough extra room for a copy of the Windows XP install.  Using EASUS or other such tool. That'll TAKE close to seven or 800 MB. Once you have done that, you would've to drive back in the laptop and booted up. If all goes well, windows 98 for come back up on a smaller primary tenet of our kitchen with an extended partition that has the Windows installation. You go into the directory that's called i386 and you're supposed to be defined a program there that will start up the Windows XP installation. Normally windows XP will start up inside a Windows 98 and do a full install. The problem is you only get one shot at this. If the installation fails the old operating system has been scrubbed. You might want to make some kind of image copy of the Windows 98 system before you put the drive back in the laptop. Just in case.
It also can be done over a network connection. Do you have a reliable net connection with Windows 98 Westmark did so, you can share the CD-ROM drive on your main computer and let Windows 98 have access to that drive. There is a way to do installation over a network, and I don't remember it that will work right under Windows 98. I've only done the operation off of a hard drive that has a copy of windows XP installation.
Somewhere this is documented in the Microsoft knowledge base, I just don't remember how to find it.
Would this work for you?



Tried to find an internal cd drive for the Inspiron 3000.  After many googles I came up with one at $128.  Far too expensive for this bare bones project.

Thanks for the suggestion Geek-9pm, but the hard drive swapping or computer to computer install of XP is beyond my abilities and time available. 

I will follow up on Patio's suggestion of looking at Oakrom Drivers.  Perhaps I can get one of their generic ones to work.  Just so frustrating that this whole project is hung up over a simple driverIf anybody wants to pitch in and help, here is a do-it-yourself kit from MS.

SAMPLE: Umss.exe Sample USB Mass Storage Driver for Windows 98 on Two Drivers

Quote from: woodyradio on January 07, 2011, 09:41:35 PM

Computer is a Dell Inspiron 3000 laptop.  I came with WIN 98 loaded.  Has a floppy drive but no internal CD drive.
233 MHZ with 144 MEGS of RAM.  Trying to put together a low cost computer for a low income person for primarily email use, using stuff I have on hand.  Wanted to use XP Home because I have an unused one on hand and I don't have WIN 2000.  It will be a little slow with XP, but should be OK for email.  Also, 2000 seems to becoming more and more of an orphan.  All I need is to get WIN 98 to read the CD drive and I am good to go. ..

I know this laptop will be slow with XP, but my goal was to get this done for under $20 and it looks like I can make it.

Reason being not only did Win98 not have native CD drivers it also lacks support for USB...

Just to give you an example, I have a Dell Pentium 3 600Mhz with 192MB Ram, and I have to keep it at SP2 because bringing it to SP3 and all latest patches leaves about 20MB Free which is barely enough to do anything.