Back up two steps. Disconnect the IDE cable from the CDROM to eliminate it as a possible problem. You might have to reconfigure the harddrive jumper temporarily, some are different on standalone than master. You shouldn't have any drivers or references to the CDRom in autoexec.bat or config.sys with 98. Then check your Device Manager for error messages. Try recording all the drivers listed for the IDE controllers, rename them in DOS (in case you need to go back), reboot with 98 boot disk with CDROM support (hook it back up), and reinstall drivers from CD upon prompt. Sometimes 98 seems to use the same IDE driver files over instead of replacing them. This will force them to be replaced. I don't know why, I just know it has worked for me several times. Ruslan???