Is there a way to connect a older laptop to my pc and use pc's cdrom?

[Kookstick]

Among other projects I have going on I have a friends laptop that is a dell P90(old one) and he would like a clean install if windows on it. My problem is that it has a EXP external cdrw drive that plugs into the pcmcia slot. This has not worked since he did the win 98 upgrade from win 95. I have installed the drivers for it but still nothing. It has power to it and the drive shows up in my computer as drive D but the cd tray won't even eject. I wanted to somehow hook up my home computer to this laptop to use the cdrom from my home system so I could fdisk, format and install a new win 95 or 98. Do you think 98 might be a bit much for this system?(P75 with 40 mb ram.)MY main concern is if I lose all data and cdrom drive wont work then I will not even be able to install a os at all. Do you guys have any ideas on how I can do this? Thanks

[Rags]

Have you tried going to control panel/system/performance and see if it tells you anything there about the PCMCIA slot not being set up completely?

Rags

[Kookstick]

Rags, actually it says drive D is using ms dos compatability mode file system. I'm not to familiar with laptops but on the taskbar the pcmcia slot shows the drive is active.??

[Rags]

Okay, using that same screen, you can fix that problem. Once you get it out of compat. mode, you will be able to use the cdrw again.

Rags



[This message has been edited by Rags (edited 15 April 2001).]

[Kookstick]

Rags- First off , thanks for the help.. It doesn't let me do anything here though. If I click details it just brings up help. In help it says to contact manufacturer to get newer drivers. I have downloaded the latest but still same thing.

[Rags]

Bring up the MSDOS prompt and see if you access the drive.

Rags

[Taz]

May be worth trying to get hold of a 2.5" to 3.5" Hard Disk convertor then you can stick the laptop's HD into a PC and transfer the Win98 directory from the CD. You can then put the HD back into the latop and run Setup from the HD.

I would say that a P75 would be a bit underpowered for running Win98 better to use Win95b if possible.

[Kookstick]

I tried the in dos and nothing. The funny thing is that it shows no sign of life other than the little green light on. It shows up in my computer as drive d but should it show in device manager as a cdrom drive or will it just fall under the pcmcia catagory?. I have looked everywhere and everything appears ok but i've never had this thing working since he's given it to me. Maybe it's dead. It says on the back of the drive to turn on the power button before turning on the pc but when you push the power button on nothing happens. This was an expensive piece of crap, lol.