I have a win98 startup disk and the win98 installation CD. my computer is a pentium 2. I'm trying to install windows on a computer with a totally busted old CD-ROM. what I have is a floppy and a USB CDRW I'm using method 4 as described here: bootdisk.com/usb.htm to load USB CD drivers. I have this added to config.sys on the startup disk: "device=a:\duse.exe dri=1 verbose" when I startup my USB CD looks like its working (its spinning around and making little noises) but the problem is my keyboard (also USB) dosent work when I load this disk. I know its because of the USB drivers because it was working before. and it is plugged in. so to RECAP: by using a bootdisk I can get the keyboard or my USB CD drive to work but not both at the same time and I need a solution or workaround to help install win98.

USB Keyboard - there are no drivers required, for the KB to work in the BIOS POST STAGE it needs to be initialized by the BIOS, I doubt your old PC has this functionality. DUSE.EXE sucks big time try the basic USBDOS Boot Disk (self-extracting WinImage) from here: http://83.67.55.228/USBBASIC.EXE You will need to copy the W98 files to the hard drive as Windows will not use DOSUSB drivers, make sure you have fdisk/format/sys beforehand with a W98SE boot disk from BOOTDISK.COM

combining those drivers with the 98 bootdisk gets my USB CD recognised, but I'm left at the command prompt without keyboard. again. so I cant copy the CD files to c:. maybe I can get my bootdisk to do this automatically with a batch file? lill help?

solved. got a regular CDROM and chucked it in there.

Much the better/easier solution; avoids all manner of irritations in the future... And they're cheap enough these days (DVDROM likwise).