I bought a new computer (just the tower) from someone and I like DOS6 so I had him put that in and WIN95. After he left, I noticed he didn't have D:\ drive in my DOSSHELL and so no CD ROM in my DOS. He only gave me a boot disk and a CD which has all the drivers. The CD ROM is on a board w/or w/out sound I don't know. What CD ROM I don't know. How do I get it into DOS. Can I type in C:\last drive = D? Will that put the D:\ drive in DOS?

you will need to copy oakcdrom.sys and mscdex.exe to C: from the boot disk or from c:\windows\command add these lines in you config.sys/autoexec.bat config.sys device=oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001 Autoexec.bat MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001 /L

Yeah - assuming that the oakcdrom.sys is the correct driver, then what Johns says will setup your CD under DOS. If it's not an IDE CD drive, but runs from a soundcard, you may need a different DOS driver. If you plan on using DOS for older games/apps, you might run into a bit of a low memory crunch, you could load the drivers 'high' devicehigh=oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001 & lh MSCDEX.exe /D:mscd001 (you don't necessarily need the /L switch) The lastdrive= statement goes in config.sys - the default lastdrive is E - so you'd only need to use the statement if you had drive letters higher than that (F,G etc)

Thanks to both of you. As I said I don't want to change anything on my computer because it takes too long to put everything back in. I will go to MS-DOS mode to put in the 'start-up' disk so I can get the CD ROM in DOS - one small - yes, I know, stupid - question. When I put in this start up disk which I got from the guy installing my new tower, is it going to automatically start reinstalling all the things stored on it, or will it wait until I instruct it to say, copy the CD-ROM info on to C:\? That's the only reason I'm hestitating getting CD ROM into the DOS part of my computer (it's aleady in Windows).

If you mean the floppy boot disk - it won't (or at least, shouldn't) change a thing. It just starts your machine with a minimal operating system (DOS) and (hopefully) loads the DOS drivers for your CD-ROM, which will allow you to access CDs in DOS mode. You really don't need this unless you plan on accessing your CD from DOS, but it is essential for reinstalling the Win95 OS from a CD, should the need arise. Booting from the floppy will only give you DOS access to your CD drive when you boot up that way - to have 'permanent' DOS access, you'd have to alter (or create) config.sys & autoexec.bat on your hard drive. It's been a while... didn't think you were still working on this ; )

jboy, thanks for the info. Yes, I know it's been a while since your first answer and I do plan to put the CD ROM in DOS. I have a DOS graphics screen w/icons that I put my DOS-based games in, so I frequently change from WIN to MS-DOS mode to get to them. It's kind of like having two operating systems because Win won't even recognize these games much less play them. But, when I try to install any games from the CD ROM into WIN, it says it can't "install" and it can't "setup" although I've always been able to do both in WIN95 and they always worked. I think because the guy that installed the new Tower did not put the CD ROM in DOS, that although I'm running from WIN to install or setup, DOS is stopping it because it won't recognize the CD ROM and won't allow especially the command "setup" - I don't know if that's really the reason none of my CD's will install or setup in WIN - I'm guessing. I do think DOS has more to say about what you're trying to do on your computer even if theoretically your not running in DOS mode at the time - just in WIN95. I don't want to have to FDisk and start from scratch to get CD's to install, so this is going to be my last ditch effort to install CD ROM drive into DOS mode and hopefully get my CD's to run right in WIN. You've been a great help and I really appreciate your sharing your knowledge with me. My boot drive is already set up for a clean C:\ prompt. I type WIN to get Windows up. Thanks again.

Well actually the Win9x drivers are independent from the DOS drivers - if you never went beyond the basics in DOS, you probably wouldn't even notice their absence. If Win9x didn't recognize your CD drive, likely you wouldn't be getting setup errors, you'd be getting 'invalid drive'. Some of the older DOS install programs make certain assumptions about the environment based on the Old DOS and don't always work under Win9x. The oakcdrom.sys driver is a pretty standard IDE DOS CD driver - if your CD drive is IDE (plugs into the motherboard) then it should work. When setting up config.sys & autoexec.bat, it's important to show the location of the referenced file on the hard drive (I slipped up) In autoexec.bat lh C:\windows\command\mscdex.exe /D:mscd001 In config.sys you also need to specify the location of the driver - so wherever you end up copying the oakcdrom.sys driver (or whichever) you'd have to point to it in config.sys (unless you just dumped at the 'root' of the hard drive - C:\) Say you created the folder 'oak' and copied the driver there, then you config.sys should read devicehigh=c:\oak\oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001 Just wanted to clarify, you're probably already familiar with DOS conventions. No need to fdisk etc - no connection whatsoever to the CD drive