before this it was doing the same thing but my computer was also restarting on its own even if i wasnt trying to run a cd rom. so thats why i did the clean install. the cd rom is brand new. but we have two of them. No i didnt install win98 so i could upgrade. i had xp installed before the clean install, i only did the clean install hoping it would fix my problems. i cant figure out why my computer keeps restarting for no reason.