Okay, I'm a computer novice. I recently purchased a used Dell Latitude XPi CD Pentium 150 laptop. The machine came without an operating system. However, after the machine boots to a C prompt, I cannot access the CDROM. The drive works, I believe, because I can hear the disc whizzing around in there, but whenever I type D: I get an Invalid Drive Specification message. I know that the machine is unable to read or access the CDROM but I cannot load Windows without a CD. Can anyone help? I searched the Dell website, but they don't have any downloadable CDROM drivers. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I've already downloaded a Universal Boot Disk.

Take the Hard Drive from that computer and put it in anather computer that have CD-ROM installed if you have one and install windows.

If you have a C: prompt(assuming that you did NOT boot up from a floppy...you did not say), then you have an operating system. At the C:\ prompt, have you typed in DIR /P to see what you have on the C: drive? You may just have the basic system files of an operating system. If it says... no file found....then there is nothing on the C: drive(you must have booted up from the floppy) but the drive is already formatted and should be ready to accept an operating system such as Win95 or 98 etc. If you have a Win98 CD, then you do not need CDROM drivers because it is bootable from the CDROM. All you have to do is go into the BIOS and set the primary(first) boot up to CDROM. Save and exit the BIOS with Win98 CD in the drive and follow the on screen instructions. If you cannot set the BIOs to boot up from the CDROM then E_mail me and I will give you enough info to make a floppy boot disk with CDROM support. Hope that helps. IF WIN98 It is best to run FAT32 on Win98 operating system. If you are not sure what I mean, then ask for more help before setting up. Confirm what you have found out and done already.

Ignore response #1. #2 is valid.