Well, I keep an old desktop just to play some games in Glide, officing, etc.  But since I´ve replaced the cd-rom drive by a new one, from Benq, it doesn´t boot any more.  I have checked the cd-rom jumper, the flat cable, the setup, the cd-rom itself, and updated the firmware,  but it always stops at the same point after the post.  When I take the drive off,  I get to windows fast.  Just didn´t update the bios yet.
                             ??? ??? ???  
Need some support.
Thanks a lot !

specs.: Old FIC motherboard, OEM made to HP/Pentium 350-Slot1/Voodoo 4500 AGP/2x128MB RAM/OPTI ISA Sound Card/Samsung 4GB/Windows98

Have you tried putting the CDrom on the other IDE (2)

This way it won't conflict with your H.D.D. I'm thinking that it an old Harddrive, maybe mode 4 and the CDrom is a newer Ultra ATA.

Make each one the master and put them on seperate cables.

Oh yeah. Don't forget to set your BIOS to AUTO for the IDE 1 MASTER and IDE 2 MASTER.

Thank you gamma, but they already are on separated cables,  as masters.  I think I´m gonna update the bios. I haven´t donne this yet  because the board was takken from a Hewllet Packard desktop, and they used to be some kind of tricky.  Besides,   the only information I have about the bios update is that it gives support to WinXP.  Well,  it´s not much..., but it must be different...
                                           :-/

The new cd rom works in a different pc? I've gotten a bad one out of the box before, might want to try that.