Recently noticed that neither of the two CDRW drives in our home desktop PC show up as they used to. This may be due to an unintended installation of some VIA 4-in-1 driver file recently. PC is running Windows 98SE.
I know there is somethink available to W98SE that is similar to the XP's Restore Point but don't know the exact syntax.
Any suggestions on how to get this back to normal? I tried to find them in the BIOS and can't seem to get to any meaningful info in the BIOS.

Also, the floppy seems to not work and instead provides a lot of error messages.

Thanks in advance!

First, obviously, update your OS if you can. Windows 98 is too vulnerable now.

But that doesn't help you with your problem if you can't/won't update. So, when you first boot the computer, does it list the optical drives whlie booting?

If you know how to get into bios, go into bios and see if it lists the drives.

To get into bios you reboot the computer, then you will have to press f12, f2, spacebar or some key to get into bios, it depends on the bios. Don't change anything in there, just look to see if it lists your drives.

Initially it sounds to me like something may be wrong with the IDE controller(s). As a test I'd put one of the optical drives as a slave on the same IDE channel as the hard drive and see if it's recognized. I wouldn't leave it with this configuration...I'd just do it as a test.

With the floppy drive, did you try different floppy disks? I have a bunch of old floppies that can no longer be read or formatted. Also, the drive may have dust in it. Try cleaning it with some canned air.

That unintended installation of some VIA 4-in-1 driver...where did it come from and how did it get installed?

First, check if the drives show up on the screen WHEN your computer is booting up, i.e. the BIOS detects them. If not, it's a physical problem. If yes, then the best option is to look in the IDE controllers section of Device Manager and either replace it with a generic one, or delete the VIA controller and reboot, hoping Windows will find and install the correct driver when it restarts.

a. The POS Compaq BIOS doesn't really provide much detail but the BIOS does show two CD drives as it boots up and the lights do come on, so I believe the drives are OK and that Windows just isn't recognizing them. I can also open and close the trays with a simple push on the front buttons.
I did try to find the IDE controller in the Device Manager and only see the hard disk controllert (Intel 82801AA Ultra ATA). Where else will I find the IDE controller?
b. I even opened up a new box and used those disks but it still had an error message.
c. Downloaded a file for a different PC and was supposed to copy it over. Next thing, the brain went to mush and I double-clicked on it while working on something else and away it went installing it.

The PC has two hard drives and two CDRWs, each pair on separate chains. I'm thinking about simply removing the power and data cables from the optical drives, start up, shut down, and re-connect them again. I vaguely recall a sequence of similar events that can be used to get a system to see the CDRW drives again.

Received some guidance from Compaq/HP but it did not resolve the problem. Edited the ENUM section of the registry, eliminating five keys but only two were re-created, Missing ESDI. MF, and SCSI. I suspect ESDI may be an issue.