Solved: formatted dell laptop, no cdrom detected

Okay, wait a second, I just re-read your posts and it looks like my problem WASN'T the same! But in the same neighborhood, so here goes:

You've got a floppy drive, right? And the CD drivers (MSCDEX.EXE, etc.) on a floppy disk, right? So all you need to do is to know how to copy them in DOS?

If that's the case:

(Assuming that those are the correct drivers) at the C: prompt type:

copy a:mscdex.exe c:\windows\dos
copy a:cdsetup.exe c:\windows\dos

(Um ... folks? Is that the right directory to copy them to? I'm a little rusty on my DOS ...)

Also, you need to put a reference to these files into AUTOEXEC.BAT, too, I think ... but I forget exactly what that reference would be, too ... um, li'l help, folks?

<sarcasm>LOL, I'm really making a good impression on my first day here!</sarcasm>

But serious: If I understand your question right, Rodeo, that might be pointing you in the right direction ... maybe ... And maybe somebody else who's not as scattered as I am at the moment can point you the rest of the way?

Remember, Rodeo, I said that there needed to be a reference to the driver in AUTOEXEC.BAT -- did you add a line to that batch file? If not, that may be why it's not working.

Also: Now that I'm home, I'm checking my own laptop, and I'm finding that MSCDEX.EXE is also in two other directories:

C:\MTM (that's probably specific to my computer's CD drive); and
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND

While we're at it, just for fun, also copy it to:

C:\

and

C:\windows

Now try running CDSETUP.

You said that you tried running it before and it couldn't find the driver (MSCDEX), so maybe now it can, and maybe it'll add that pesky line to AUTOEXEC.BAT for you ... (and me!)

Or MAYBE one of the helpful folks out there can tell us what that autoexec line should be (and one for CONFIG.SYS too, now that I think about it), since I'm drawing a blank ...

(Sorry, I told you I was rusty! I've been using XP for over a year now ... )