I tried to install printer software in my brother in laws old packard bell only to find out I had to upgrade the RAM. When I installed the RAM Win98 SE (upgrade version) did not recognize the new RAM. When I restarted in safe mode, it recognized the new RAM. ??? I did a test and removed one section of RAM at a time and no matter what win98 only said I was running 30 megs of RAM. When I went to reinstall a clean full version of win98 SE I found that I cannot boot with cd ROM support because the CD ROM does not register while in DOS. Win98 start up disk will not find the CD ROM either. I need help bad. Any ideas? The computer is old. it is a pentium class processor (66hz). The CD ROM is connected to the sound card and is only recognized in the operating system.

66 MHz? Dude, you need a new computer. Badly.

Question, what kind of RAM? You would have to get REALLY old RAM for it to work, modern RAM is not compatable with older computers, just as old RAM is not compatable with modern computers.

It's not my computer. I upgraded it for my brother in law. The RAM is old (EDO). That was not the problem though. I figured it out. In msconfig the advanced tab there was a button checked limiting the RAM to 30 megs. When I unchecked it 98SE read it and it worked fine.