# Boot Disk for Dell Laptop Latitude LM



## zacyoda (Nov 8, 2002)

I have a Dell laptop Latitude LM and I have to reinstall the Operating System. The problem I have is the floppy and the cd rom use the same drive bay so when i use the win98 boot disk I cant install the drivers for the cd rom. I tried copying all the files to my hard drive and booting from that and it doesnt work either. I was wondering if someone has a bootdisk made just for this problem and where can i download it from.

Thanks


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

A boot disk is a boot disk is a boot disk.

If you can't use the CD and Floppy at the same time it won't matter which boot disk you use.


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## zacyoda (Nov 8, 2002)

Thanks for nothing.


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## Lurker1 (Jan 30, 2001)

Hi zacyoda

I don't think there is any such disk. You should be able to copy a standard windows 98 boot disk to the hard drive and change all the references in the .bat files from A: to C: using the edit command. You should then be able to access the cdrom drive after booting off the C drive.

Or you may be able to buy a cable from Dell that will allow you to hook up the floppy drive to the back of the unit and use both the floppy and the cdrom at the same time. Most of the Latitudes I have seen will allow this. You can call Dell to see if this can be done with your model and to find out it's cost.

Heres a recent post that covers loading the operating system on a laptop. Its a long read but in the end it does work.

http://forums.techguy.org/showthread.php?threadid=101041&highlight=laptop


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## zacyoda (Nov 8, 2002)

Thank you very much for your reply. I tried the edit command and in the code it doesn't specify a: so i did order a cable from dell that lets you run the floppy and the cdrom at the same time.
Thanks again for your help.
zacyoda


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## knownothing (Dec 9, 2002)

The Dell Latitude LM will work with the floppy drive and CD-ROM drive with the floppy externally connected to the parallel port (printer port) on the rear of the laptop. If you don't have the cable you can boot the laptop with the boot diskette that has the CD-ROM drivers on it. Then you can use the "sys c:" command to add the system files to the hard drive to make it bootable. Then you should be able to copy "mscdex.exe" and "oakcdrom.sys" to your hard drive. You will need a "config.sys" file with the following in it:
device=oakcdrom.sys /d:mscd001
and an "autoexec.bat" with the following in it:
mscdex.exe /d:mscd001
This is assuming that you put these files in the root directory (c:/).


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## zacyoda (Nov 8, 2002)

Thanks much that worked.
Thanks again
zacyoda


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