Geek help urgently needed

Who knows how to fix a very ill computer? Windows 98 gurus required urgently.

My housemate snow_leopard's computer is not in a good way this morning. Basics of what happened:

She installed some new software (label making package) this morning. Windows 98 then stopped working, complaining certain DLL files were now missing or corrupt. I'm guessing it overwrote some of them with old versions. Safe mode refused to load correctly too. (Explorer crashes upon loading, and we get an empty Windows screen with no menus, icons - just the mouse pointer). The only thing that works is a reboot.

Decided it was bad enough to reinstall Windows 98. This was done, but at the final stages it would not recognize F: (the CD drive) exists and refused to allow it as a valid location to install drivers from. After skipping the drivers, and attempting to run Windows again, there is no improvement.

In fact, things are worse - the CD drive no longer exists according to the computer. I'm using a floppy disk with CD drivers on, which worked the first time I tried reinstalling windows this morning, but now refuses to install any CD drivers on the grounds that it cannot locate a CD drive. Hence I can't even access the Windows install CD anymore.

Damn Windows. Any clues? Its looking as if we're searching for a friendly person with a spare Windows 98 install CD, with CD drivers that work.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Update: It's being random. It's decided the CD drive exists again now. Which is good, but I don't know why it failed to find it before. Am attempting another reinstall.

Further update: Have come to the conclusion the copy of the Win98 CD we have is dead.

Everything that can go wrong does go wrong

The saga of the death of Catt's computer continues...

It looks possible that the problems installing Windows 98 was due to a faulty CD drive. However, It's also possible it was merely our copy of Windows 98 that had become corrupt, so thanks to arkady (who is a star) we have a copy of Windows 98.

Note to self: When out at pubs and clubs in future, consider caffeine as an alternative to alcohol. It makes for a very talkative and sociable mark, without the bad side effects.

So I put arkady's shiny working version of Windows 98 in the CD drive, and I put the floppy with the CD drivers in the floppy drive, and attempt to boot the machine. After a lot of strange noises from the floppy drive I get the screen I didn't want to see:

'Operating System not found'

Eeeep.

I attempt to eject the floppy and see what might be wrong, and it's stuck in the floppy drive. Pressing eject a few more times, I manage to get the floppy out, but the metal guard on the floppy gets stuck in the drive. The metal has now been removed, but the floppy drive eject is now dead, rendering it useless, and so is the floppy disk with the CD drivers on. Which we have no backup of. Aaaaaargh!!!!

Anybody got a copy of some CD drivers (for DOS) on floppy? *smallsmile*
Catt intends to buy a new floppy drive, and a new CD drive if needed sometime this week.

Update: Sudden realization that creating a new bootdisk with CD drivers on myself is a doddle. So I did that.