i have an old computer with windows 3.1. the boot is either boot from floppy or hard drive. since it has no way of booting from cd, is it possible to boot the computer using a windows 98 boot diskette w/ cd driver and install the 98 on cd that way? i tried it once and it didnt work. not sure of if it wasnt done correctly or is not possible. the bios is ambios.

If it already boots, why do you need a bootdisk? The CD drive will not be listed in the BIOS, and may even be a proprietary (non-ide) type, running from the soundcard - in which case a 'universal' driver won't work. Presumably there's already a CD driver on the machine?? A 486 is not really suitable for running 98 - bare minimum is a 66MHz processer with 16Mb RAM - which in no way means it will run faster than a crawl. Tech Support: "I need you to boot the computer." Customer: THUMP! Pause. "No, that didn't help."

well all it has on it is dos 6.22 and windows 3.1. i dont think the cd drive i have is supported by 3.1 so i was wondering if i used the driver from a 98 or later bootdisk would it work?

Yes, I know. "i dont think the cd drive i have is supported by 3.1" What do you mean? Support for the CD drive depends on the DOS drivers - Win3x really has nothing to do with it. The drivers on the Win9x bootdisks are also a DOS drivers. As I may have mentioned, if your CD drive is not IDE - and many of that era weren't - then the 'standard' CD drivers won't work. It is very likely that The Driver Already Exists on Your Hard Drive - then there would be little doubt as to whether or not it worked. My other point was, even if you are successful, performance is bound to be abysmal (assuming you even meet the min specs) Tech Support: "I need you to boot the computer." Customer: THUMP! Pause. "No, that didn't help."

Yeah, if a cdrom is set up OK in dos it's automatically set up in 3.1 also. Assuming the cdrom is actually installed and working OK in dos now, boot with a 98 bootdisk and choose cdrom support. The messages on the screen will tell you if it recogizes the cdrom. If not you'll need to put together a bootdisk with the proprietary drivers. Besides the speed issue that jboy mentioned you also need to consider the size of your hard drive. 98 will take about 200-250 meg and that's not including any additional software you may want to install. But in general, yes you should be able to boot from a 98 bootdisk, choose cdrom support and install windows.

super, If you still have problems after trying the above methods there is another option. Take your hard-drive to a computer that does have a functional CD. Copy the "Win98" folder from the CD onto your hard-drive, i usually put it at "C:\Win98". Now you take your harddrive back to your computer, boot up with the Win98 Bootdisk without CD support, and then install from the hard-drive. You'll be at a dos prompt so type "c:" without the quotes, then "CD Win98" without the quotes, then "setup.exe". The great thing about installing this way is that anytime the OS needs the Win98 Disk it will find it automatically without prompting for the disk. Good luck, wired PS: if you don't have a good bootdisk you can get one at www.bootdisk.com.

If you feel you must upgrade, go to win95 instead of win98.