I reformatted my c: drive and reinstalled Win98, but afterwards, Windows wouldn’t always shut down, and it wouldn’t recognize the PC slot. So I reformatted again, and typed autoexec, as before. But now it says “Device driver not found: ‘SSCD000’. No valid CDROM device drivers selected.” And it gives a directory of a:*exe, and an a: prompt. The same thing happens with 2 different diskettes. (It makes me wonder if I forgot to type /s at the end of the format command, but I doubt it.) If I type “format c:”, it goes ahead and asks me if I want to proceed, but I didn’t. If I type “format c: /s”, it says “Insert DOS disk in drive A: and press ENTER when ready …”. If I leave the boot disc in and hit enter, it says the same thing. I ran scandisk on both a: and c: and there were no problems. Can anyone tell me what to do next?

Windows not always shutting down may have only been because you needed the 98 SE shutdown patch. I'm not sure what you mean by 'PC slot' The process you went through doesn't make much sense. Part of the problem might be that you need a different bootdisk. Anyway the normal process or formatting and reinstalling would be: Boot with the 98 bootdisk. At the a:\> prompt type: format c: and return. When it's done, reboot again with the 98 bootdisk and choose cdrom support. At the a:\> prompt, and with the 98 disk in the cdrom type: d:\setup and return, where d: is your cdrom drive letter. It may be a different letter depending depending on the type of bootdisk and your drive configuration.

Thanks for the reply! By PC, I meant PCMCIA. So it's okay to format with "format c:", rather than "format c: /s"?

You only need to use the /s option if you need to boot from the c: drive before installing windows. Laptops with that switchable floppy/cdrom is an example where it might be a good idea. Otherwise the normal installation process will install the system files. You probably just need to install the drivers for the PCMIA cards.