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Installing a Child's CD on a Windows 98 Computer

© Anne Kellerman

My granddaughter, a third grader, goes to a very good public school that tends to stress mathematical concepts rather than rote memory. Now do not think "new math" here. It turns out the concepts are well thought out and quite useful, especially in the long run for understanding mathematics. Unfortunately, New York state provides standardized, timed tests of mathematical ability and her school has pride in being on top of such tests. A pre-test, one grade earlier than the key standardized test, revealed that although the students understood concepts excellently, in fact far beyond grade level, the students could not conjure up math facts fast enough to do well on timed tests. The students used quite sophisticated reasoning to calculate 9 + 8 rather than having memorized the answer to 9+8. This reasoning took longer than using memorized sums or multiplication tables would take, so they did not score superbly on the practice tests. Superbly is the requirement. The students had learned reasoning for 3 ½ years, so changing over to memory for math presents quite a challenge.

It was obvious to me that what my granddaughter needed was good old fashioned flash cards, but that in this century good old fashioned flash cards should be electronic. In fact, she needed the dreaded "drill and kill" CD-ROM approach that had gone out of fashion several years ago. So, I went to the Internet rather than the local computer software stores, thinking that I could get some opinion on quality of the CD-ROM drill and kill flash cards. I sensed a strong recommendation for a CD from a company that sounded like they knew what they were doing . The CD indicated it would work on Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, ME, and XP. I needed something that would work on Windows 98, since her computer is about three years old. So, I ordered this CD and took it to my granddaughter's house and proceeded to install it.

In short order it crashed her computer. I tried again and the same thing happened. I called the 800 help number and was told that since their CD drive was not merely a CD drive, but instead a DVD drive, this could be the problem although be the problem could also be that the drive letter was not D:. The support staff was very nice and offered to send a newer version of the CD that would fix both possible problems. They sent a CD, but it was the same CD as the original one and hence did not work. In fact, they sent 3 mCDs CDs, of which only the last one was a different, later version. Even this one did not work. The support staff, getting into the spirit of this comedy of errors, finally decided the way out of this would be to send me a different CD which, while not electronic flash cards, did drill in math facts. I agreed to accept it. This one did not install either without crashing the system. I finally took the CD and studied it with my favorite shell/file viewer, Power Desk. The CD seemed to require a more recent version of Direct X QuickTimeTime that my granddaughter's computer could run, since it is of Windows 98 vintage. A ha, I said, getting tired of receiving non-workCDs CDs in the mail. Let's see if we can install more recent versions of these components on my granddaughter's now-ancient computer. Sure enough, this did the trick. Both prograCDs CDs now work just fine and my granddaughter and her younger brother are well on their way to learning all the math facts for rapid application on standardized texts and restaurant tipping.

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