If the BIOS detects the drive, Win98 will normally stop and ask you for a driver for it. The plug-and-play functionality isn't as good as in newer OS versions, but it usually does ok. And if the BIOS finds the drives, they should show, with an X-out, in Device Manager. If you tell Win98 Device Manager to add hardware, and feed it a driver, it will search, more thoroughly than the normal BIOS check, to try to find something to drive, and will usually come up with anything that the PnP/BIOS check missed.

Any machine still using Win98 is likely old enough to have something other than IDE CD-ROM hookups, and may require an AutoEx.bat or Config.sys line to mount the CD drive. Most likely the DVD is an add-on, and probably is IDE. DVD's weren't around much when Win98 was current.

The biggest glitch is that all the installation/recovery software is probably on a CD, which he can't read until he gets the CD drive up. The Dell help desk can most likely hook him up to download the right driver file(s), they can tell from his model number if that's what he needs, and the drivers can be installed with Device Manager in normal Windows mode, or by typing the call into Config.sys if that's what's necessary.

It was fairly common, when Win98 was new, for the CD drivers to be on a separate floppy, since the floppy came with the CD that was installed by the builder, and for situations like this where you have to get the CD drive up to read your recovery CD. IF he still has the "boot floppy" that Win98 offered to make for him the first time he turned it on, his CD driver, and Config.sys to turn it on, should be on it - unless he's changed drives and didn't make a new one.

John