The "noise like static" was probably telling you that the keyboard buffer was full, and was the sound of more "this key" signals "bouncing off" the buffer. It doesn't hurt a thing, since "rejected bits" have a place to go called the "bit bucket" - a device part of all computers to keep stray bits from running out on the floor. (a very old joke)

My recollection of Win98 details is rather weak, but somewhere withing Win98 you have a module called "Device Manager" or "Hardware Manager" or something like that. Do the "unthinkable" and look in Windows Help (Usually Start|Help) and you should find instructions for getting to it if you haven't figured that out already. Try "Add New Hardware" for a search term in Help if something else doesn't pop up.

If you find your DVD/CD drive "installed" there, try DELETING the drive, (in the "Manager") and then reboot. Win98 should find the drive as a "device not installed." It will automatically pull a driver from its stock of generic ones if your Win98 CAB files are still on the hard drive, or will ask you for your installation disk(s) if the CAB files have been removed, and/or will ask if you have a driver (i.e. an installation disk for the DVD/CD drive). [This is the way you should uninstall/install a device.]

If no "Optical Drive" or CD drive or DVD drive is shown in the "Manager," it probably means that Windows can't even see the drive, which could be caused by that vast number of "possibles" that are very difficult to deal with long distance. One possible cause would be that the mscdx.exe file isn't listed in your Autoexec.bat or Config.sys files, but that's unlikely if the CD functions work. If the file isn't loaded when you boot, Windows doesn't know how to talk to an "optical drive" and sometimes can't tell what it is.

You can find the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files using Windows Explorer, although you may have to turn on "show hidden and system files" in Tools Options in Win Explorer. The files will open in Notepad (or any Word Processor) so you can look at what's in them. As long as that file appears in one of them, just exit without saving. With Win98, both of the files should be in system root (C:\) location.

Beyond that, I can't think of any simple suggestions other than to try looking at the computer maker's site to try to find a BIOS/SETUP key that may work, and try looking at the DVD/CD drive manufacturer's site so see if there's an updated Drive BIOS and/or driver that you can download. If the computer is an "unbranded one" you might be able to look inside and find the BIOS chip, and try looking up that BIOS, but the "identifiers" on the chip are in mystic languages that makes it hard even to tell which one is the right chip, much less who made it.

If you don't see the message during boot that says "Press [some key] to enter setup" the BIOS has been set for "quiet boot" and I don't know of a method for getting in except by remembering what it used to say, or by finding the right key(s) by trial and error.

- Later versions of Windows give some information about BIOS settings in "System Information," which may be something you'll find in the list of programs, probably under Accessories/System Tools or something similar. I don't recall how much info Win98 included. (My recollection was that I tried to print a Win98 SysInfo file once and ended up with only a few hundred pages, so it's a lot less info than you get from WinXP.)

- The maker of your computer may have "edited" the Win98 Help files, if it was an OEM installation, so you may be able to find how to get into SETUP there(?). If you've upgraded from an earlier (Win95?) OEM, the old Win95 Help files might have information(?), since the method depends on the BIOS and other hardware which wouldn't have been changed by the upgrade - no warranties on this though. Win98 should be able to read Win95 Help files, although that's another thing lost in the fog of distant times past. There have been changes in help file format that make some older ones unreadable in new Win versions.

John