My brain is about to explode! I am having the same or very similar problem after formatting my hard drive. With the aid of a few clever mates and a little advice from the net, I have made some headway but as yet, I am unable to load win98 back on. My CD Rom is a panasonic CR581B. I have downloaded a driver from the net and put it on the boot disk but, so far, all has failed and after reading a web page that i just found, I dont hold much hope. Here is what it said. The address is http://alamopc.org/pcprot/prot598-1.html "One of the most serious drawbacks to Windows 95 is its failure to create a startup diskette that will enable you to access the files on your CD-ROM. If : your hard drive crashes and you have to replace it, or you get a virus and have to format your hard drive and start over, or you decide to reformat your hard drive to fix recurring problems beyond SCANDISK's capability to fix, then you must have this diskette to proceed. Microsoft doesn't provide it when you create a Startup Disk through the Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs icon. There's a simple reason: it requires knowledge of the specific CD-ROM drive in your machine. Microsoft has no idea what drive your computer will use, and each drive has unique drivers that must be installed by your CD-ROM Access Floppy. It's a little tricky to create one of these floppies, but not impossible. When should you create one of these floppies? Do it right now!!!! If you wait until you have a problem with your drive and need to use the disk, you are truly out of luck. You will need some profe$$ional help in recovering from your dilemma. " So if anyone can shed a little more light on the "dilemma", I would be very appreciative.

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