I have a Sony Vaio with a corrupt system on it. I need to be able to boot to my external Memorex CDRW drive to re-install. I have tried many different things, all of which include making an MSDOS Startup Disk on my desktop system and then adding files to that disk. I have tried all of the suggestions at http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm I have both the CDROM drive and an external floppy made by Imation connected to a hub to allow both of them to be connected at the same time. Please help.

http://www.tssc.de/products/enablers/main.htm

http://business.virgin.net/x86.computers/msdosnt5.htm

Unless you bios supports boot from a usb device, you're kinda dead in the water. Check there to see if it has this feature. If it does, then disconnect the hub and plug the cd drive straight in. You don't need the floppy drive to install 98se or xp. Both operating system install cd's have all the format and partition support on the cd itself... Let us know what happens. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid...

I got the disk C: formatted and set active with fdisk off of a WIN98 Floppy Bootdisk, I have made a disk with the following files: Autoexec.bat / Command.com / Config.sys / Duse.exe / Duseldr.com / emm386.exe / himem.exe / and mscdex.exe I have Autoexec.bat set: duseldr a:\duse.exe MSCDEX /D:USBCDROM /S /M:15 /V I have Config.sys set: device=a:\himem.sys devicehigh=a:\emm386.exe dos=high,umb The disk boots fine but a window pops up and says Dectected USB Storage Device, Failed To Load USB Storage Device. I can unplug it and it recognizes that I am removing it, and also when plugging it back in...any suggestions? It is a Memorex Ultra Speed CD Recorder manufactured September 2004, Model# MRX523252AJEL-1. It did not come with drivers.

I e-mailed Memorex with this same problem, I have the same recorder. I was told by their tech. support there is "no way" to get this recorder to run in dos mode. I tried everything and finally gave up, they were right. Chuck