I have a Sony PCG-C1XS laptop. It doesn't have a built-in CD-ROM or floppy drive. But I have an external floppy and CD-ROM that can be plugged into USB. The CD-ROM has a USB to ATAPI converter. I can boot from the floppy, but not from the CD-ROM for some reason (checked the bios and boot sequence is ok). First question is if anyone knows how i can boot. The main problem is that i have a corrupt version of win98 that I can get into, but it has loads of errors. I want to upgrade to win2k, so I put in the CD to install and the setup hangs every time. I copied the i386 directory of the win2k CD onto my D: drive. Win98 is installed on C: Then I rebooted into DOS and ran winnt.exe from the D:\i386 and it seemed to be ok. Copied files and then rebooted, but then it goes into finalising the install and I get a blue screen of death every time (some memory dump, etc... horrible thing). I checked the Sony website and they say that you should update the BIOS before installing win2k. I downloaded the file (while in win98) and tried to run the file, but I get an error every time. My Win98 copy is just terrible. So I can't update the BIOS from windows... anyone knows if I can update it from DOS somehow? Also I tried using the Sony Recovery CD. It should autoplay from within windows, but it doesn't. There is only one .exe file on the CD and that doesn't give me anything useful. It's a bootable CD, but i can't boot from it because of the CD-ROM problem described earlier. I know this is a large posting, but I figure the more info I give, the better you can help. Thanks a lot.

First off you normally Flash the BIOS from DOS mode, create a Windows 98 startup disk, and read Sony's instructions extremely carefully, you do not want to knacker the BIOS!

Sony Recovery CD's look for hidden partition on hard drive, it can not find them, therefore I feel you should consider totally cleansing the hard drive and fdisk/format as obviously there is some problems you are having. Try:

http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/support/faqs/faqs_20000120_0000000036.htm

obviously back-up all your data first as this puts drive back to factory setting.

You should be able to install W2K from the W98 boot disk you created, see (which is XP but W2K the same):

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307848

but obviously will need DOS USB drivers see:

www.mwpms.uklinux.net/usbfire.txt

for links, the Panasonic drivers are fairly universal. Last but not least in the W2K install it will ask if you have further devices such as unrecognised drives etc at this point you need to offer the USB to ATAPI W2K driver and if it likes the driver will install CD support.........

Good luck and have fun!

Thanks for your thorough response. I have a couple of questions though. First, I can only plug in either the floppy or the CD-ROM drive, but not both since I only have one USB port. So if I format the drive, I will lose the install files that are on the hard drive and will be forced to use the CD-ROM... or maybe I should just format C drive and leave D. D doesn't have any OS installed, just has the win2k install files. Second thing, if I do format then I will need the USB drivers as you mentioned. I have no idea how to install drivers in DOS. The website you gave me has many links to many files... can you point me to exactly which files I would need and how to install them from a command prompt once I have booted with a boot disk? Thanks again for your help.

This may help, but only if prepared to format C: which you can do from the W98 OEM boot disk, which you could download from www.bootdisk.com

http://web14.compaq.com/falco/detail.asp?FAQnum=FAQ4860

At step 4 after creating config.sys file do not save and exit but add following lines then save and exit:

device=usbaspi.sys /w/v
device=usbcd.sys /d:usbcd001

At step 4 after creating autoexec.bat file do not save and exit but add following lines then save and exit:

mscdex.exe /d:usbcd001

For the files you need to go to:
http://panasonic.co.jp/pcc/products/drive/cdrrw/kxlrw40an/download.html and download file kxlr40an.exe then use WinRAR to extract the USBCD.SYS and USBASPI.SYS from F2H folder in download, which needs to be copied to a floppy and also MSCDEX.EXE from
http://download.microsoft.com/download/dos622/Utility/2.23/DOS/EN-US/Mscdx223.exe which needs to be copied to floppy.

After step 4 ignore other steps and insert the floppy with the 3 downloaded files and type at the A:\_ prompt:
copy a:\*.* c:\
(copy SPACE a:\*.* SPACE C:\) then press enter, then switch off, insert CD Drive and hopefully will have CD support

Before going ahead has your present BIOS got an entry for booting from USB device apart from USB floppy??

Have you sorted out BIOS, the new BIOS may offer other boot options??

I presume you tried running W2K install from
within W98 as a fresh install to drive D:??

Do you have specific drivers for the USB to ATAPI convertor??

x86, thanks a lot for all your help. I finally managed to get the CD-ROM support in DOS after booting from the floppy. I followed your instructions and they worked out well. Then I copied the i386 directory of my winXP CD (decided to go for XP instead of 2k) onto the drive and I ran winnt.exe from DOS and it went on smoothly. No screen of death like with win2k. I never figured out what that SESSION3_INITIALIZATION_FAILED error I was getting after the first reboot of the win2k installation. So I have winXP up and running and everything is smoothe. I never updated the BIOS, so no, there is no support to boot off other than the USB floppy. The BIOS update is here http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/bin/support/support.cgi?whichone=1&installfile=soa2mo5nl4.txt&downloadfile=SOA2M05NL4.EXE
Maybe you can figure it out. It is a win32 installer and can't be run from DOS... but apparently it is supposed to create a floppy for you at some point during the installation and you have to boot from that to flash your BIOS. But the file might be corrupt or the installer doesn't work because I tried running it on both win98 and winXP and it doesn't seem to work. If you want to give it a shot and see if it works that would be cool... otherwise I'll just stick with the current BIOS. Thanks again for all your help. I really appreciate it.