There's nothing really wrong with Win98SE, but Mickey$oft doesn't sell it anymore, doesn't support it, and will NOT issue new updates and security fixes for it. (You can still get $upport from Microsoft, but on a $$Pay$$Per$$Call$$ basis only. "Free" support ended about a year ago.)

While it is stable enough for many uses, it is nowhere near the stability and reliability you get with WinXP. (Of course it's nowhere near the SIZE of WinXP, and will run well on machines that can't handle WinXP or Win2K.)

When Win98 was considered the "standard" OS, few machines were set up to boot from CD - they often could be, but CD boot was seldom turned on. Even the XP laptop I bought from Dell a couple of years back didn't have CD boot turned on - as delivered. It depends a lot on when the system in question was produced, and how many changes have been made.

One of the problems with CD boot is that the BIOS has to find the CD before it can read the MSCDEX driver to give the CD drive a drive name. In the present case, the BIOS isn't finding it, or it would at least be listed in Device Manager - even if not functional (usually).

And it's always possible that the kids really did try to play a peanut butter sandwich in the CD drive. (Or more likely, got a "stuck" CD and "forced" the drive open.)

John