Sony VAIO with non-Sony PCMCIA CD-ROM problem!

[eepico]

Hello all,

My friend purchased a Sony VAIO PCG-SR9GT laptop with Windows 98 preinstalled but she didn't buy with the CD-ROM drive, only the floppy drive! She installed a Panasonic PCMCIA CD-ROM (KXL-808) instead and worked under Windows 98 perfectly. Few days ago, she formated the harddisk and wanted to install Windows again, but she found that the Panasonic CD-ROM drive couldn't boot up her laptop using Windows 98 bootable setup CD. She believed that the boot sequence is cd-rom, a:, c:. However, the Panasonic CD-ROM couldn't detect by using Windows 98/ME/XP bootable floppy disks. She and I tried those above and couldn't think of any new idea to boot up her CD-ROM. Any hints among you guys? Thank you very much!!

PS: I also tried to boot her laptop using DOS 6.22 boot disk and wanted to install DOS then setup the CD-ROM but Sony VAIO seems doesn't support DOS because it repeatly reboots using this DOS boot disk and couldn't get into the DOS prompt...

 

[kjseever]

I had an old laptop that would boot of of the CD but after you installed windows it wouldn't recognize it any more. Here is what I had to do to get it to work. Boot off of the Win98 boot disk and format the drive and copy the system files to it. Then reboot the computer. It should come up to a command prompt now. Install the CD-ROM's DOS driver. Then copy all of the files to the hard drive and install Windows from the hard drive.

Hope this helps,

Kenny

 

[eepico]

You meant boot up the laptop using Win98 boot floppy disk and copy all system files (those in RAM Drive?) into harddisk (C:\DOS directory?) and then "sys A: C:", then the laptop can boot up by harddisk and then can install CD-ROM DOS driver? Am I correct?

 

[kjseever]

Yes and no. When you format it just use the /s switch and it will copy all of the system files necessary to boot to the hard disk. Then install the CD-ROM driver and go from their.

 

[RiverGuy]

Windows has to install the PCMCIA bus. Its not like an IDE where the BIOS will recogize what is on it--I believe. I don't think there will be any way to use the CD ROM unless you find some PCMCIA drivers. She should have used the restore CD from within Windows if the laptop came with one instead of reformatting from DOS.

 

[eepico]

Yes, I got your meaning. I formated c: drive again with /s switch and copied all the system files from the boot disk (and the RAM Drive) to c: then edited a dummy autoexec.bat and config.sys to install the CD-ROM DOS driver. It works now, great thanks to you guys!!