Help me please. I've just reformatted my computer, so I have NOTHING left. I inserted my win98 startup disk and that was fine. My BIOS is set to read from the CD ROM drive next. However, when it attempts to do so, it instead reads: Boot from ATAPI CD ROM: Failure... I know the new cd works, so what on earth is going on?

Did u by chance make a bootable floppy disk? If so first use the floppy disk to get the computer going. This will put CD-Rom Drivers on the computer (or should) Then type the directory of the setup file on the CD. This should work. If not find a friend with the SAME EXACT OS and make a bootable floppy. 1 last idea. Go into the BIOS, reset to factory form. Save, exit, re-enter bios, set CD-ROM to be the VERY first boot device (before hard disk) This should also work.

Yup, did that. Have the bootable floppy, installed it. Thge drivers work/are installed, so that doesn't seem to be the problem. The CD ROM is configured to be the very first boot device (before the harddrive). This error occurs when the comp is trying to read from the CD ROM. I know the drive itself works (it was fine before) but for some reason, there are difficulties during startup. I don't even have an OS and I have no idea how to fix it.

Since the drivers load from the floppy then everything's OK. Your 98 cd is probably not bootable. Change the boot sequence to: a: c: cdrom Also, when you say you 'installed' the bootdisk, do you mean you copied it to the hard drive? That's not the best way to do it. If that's what you did you should reformat and start over. Then just boot from the bootdisk, choose cdrom support and at the a:\> prompt type: d:\setup and enter, where d: is your cdrom drive letter. It may be e: as some bootdisks create a ram disk as d:. You'll just have to see what works.

Win98FE CDs are not bootable.

I've got the same problem as Janine... I formatted a pc which had Win95 as OS. Format done with a Win98 disk. I wanted to install Win98 and have the same error message: Boot from ATAPI CD ROM: Failure... Bios is also set to read from CD Rom first, it tries to start from the cd but it doens't work... Janine: has your problem been solved in the mean time???