About laptop Compaq Persario 1246. My cd-rom drive accidently broke down (phisically) after I formatted the C-drive in order to restore Windows 98 with the restore disk. So the computer is "empty" at this moment. Now I think I need to use an external cdrom drive to run the restore disk (since it will seemingly cost me a fortune to get the original drive repaired). I haven't bought an externat cdrom drive yet, but I have tried to boot with my usual boot floppy, having a usb hub inserted in the usb port. I'm not sure if the boot recognizes the hub, but the red lightballs on the hub don't light. Therefore I'm afraid it won't work with an external cdrom drive either. My question is this: Will the computer automatically recognize an external cdrom drive in the usb port? Or do I need a special boot floppy to make the computer recognize the usb device? And if so: Which files must be added to the boot floppy - and which lines must be added in config.sys autoexec.bat and others... Hoping one of you can guide me (I guess it is obvious I'm not a computer expert...) Yours sincerely Martin Oerteby (Denmark)

Check out the USB Resources for DOS page on my site; http://darkehorse.web.com. There you will find a boot diskette with USB CD ROM support. Use it, it is probably your best bet. Good luck, -Michael

Thank you! I downloaded your bootdisk, and it did look for an USB CD-rom during booting. Since I had none, I went out to buy one. But in every store I went (three of the major stores in Denmark), they had only USB CD-RWs (burners). And I couldn't be sure if the USB CD-boot would recognize that. So I went home and came up with a completely different solution to my problem - having nothing to do with USB CDS-rom. Would you like to know? (should probably be posted under "dos networking" so I will do that too) ABOUT MY LAPTOP WITH NO OPERATING SYSTEM AND A BROKEN CD-ROM DRIVE: Thank you all for the help you provided. I want to tell you what happened next - and how I actually solved the problem: 1) I partitioned my laptop (into drive C and D). I will come back to the reason for this. 2) I copied the WIN98-folder on my laptop's Windows 98 CD-rom to the C-drive of my desktop. 3) I downloaded a trailversion of FileVan for DOS - a program which can transfer files between DOS and DOS through the LPT ports. 4) I booted both computers in DOS mode and installed FileVan for DOS (C-drive on the desktop, D-drive on the laptop). 5) I created an empty directory struckture on the laptop's D drive identical to the directory struckture of the WIN98 on the Windows98 CD-rom (it is a simple strukture). 6) I connected the two computers by cable through the LPT-ports and activated FileVan (fvandos.exe) on both computers: There were instant connection in a Pathfinder-like environment. 7) I transferred the files on the desktop's C:\WIN98 directory and subdirectories to the empty D:\WIN98 directory and subdirectories on the laptop (not the whole path all at once, but (sub)directory by (sub)directory). All filenames in WIN98 are "short", that is eight or less caracters. So files with long filenames is not an issue. 8) On the laptop's C drive I created another empty WIN98 directory struckture and copied the files in D:\WIN98 to C:\WIN98 9) I installed Windows 98 on the laptop's C drive (C:\WIN98\install.exe). Whenever the installation program would ask for the Windows 98 CD-rom, I would point to C:\WIN98. THE REASON WHY I PARTITIONED THE LAPTOP: If at some point later I would need to format the laptop's C drive, I will not have to do the file transfer again to install Windows 98, but simply boot in DOS mode and create the empty WIN98 directory on the C drive and copy the files from D:\WIN98. ABOUT FILEVAN: Easy-to-use program. There is a version of the program that can tranfer files from Windows to DOS and vice versa. I think there is some way to handle long filenames, but I never got around to find this out, since the trailversion expired after only 20 minutes! The trailversion of FileVan for DOS did the trick in this case, and it seemingly lasts longer than 30 minutes - though the program instrucktions indicates this. INSTALLING OTHER PROGRAMS FROM CD-ROM: Having Window 98 installed on both computers, I simply made a Direct Cable Connection and shared the desktop's cd-rom drive. It was no big deal to install programs on the laptop this way. Greetings Martin Oerteby