If you had that exact line in AUTOEXEC.BAT
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rem - By Windows Setup - LH C:\Windows\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:CDROM
then the Windows setup has moved
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LH C:\Windows\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:CDROM
to a file called C:\WINDOWS\DOSSTART.BAT which is executed when you exit to DOS from the Windows 95/98 Start menu and MSCDEX.EXE is
not loaded when Windows starts.
If that was the case then the compatibility issue was probably caused by the OAKCDROM.SYS driver itself, if you still need CD-ROM support for DOS games you can try the VIDE-CDD.SYS driver (
https://sites.google.com/site/pcdosretro/vide-cdd) patched for PCI IDE controllers and see if that works.
Alternatively and perhaps even easier you can download the Creative CD-ROM drivers, these are used for both IDE controllers on the motherboard and expansion or sound cards (see bellow) and when exiting from Windows to MS-DOS mode will automatically load the CD-ROM drivers:
https://files.creative.com/manualdn/Dri ... IDED95.EXE
You have to put that file in a 1.44 mb floppy image or directly on the disk image used in PCem, you can use WinImage (
https://www.winimage.com/download.htm) for that, be sure to choose on the save dialog to save it as "Image file (*.ima)" because the default option of "compressed image file" (*.imz) will save the image compressed in ZIP format and that is not (yet) recognized by PCem.
Then you can run it inside Windows 95/98, it will extract its contents to the same folder so better place it in a new folder like c:\sb to remember where the files are, after extracting it you will find a setup.exe in that folder which is the Creative CD-ROM driver setup for Windows, run it and follow the setup wizard, on the last screen choose the first option, if you have PCem configured with CD-ROM as "Drive 1 Primary Slave (D:)" it should work fine.
*Even if you are emulating any model of Sound Blaster sound card in PCem the CD-ROM drive will be on the emulated motherboard IDE controller.
To test it exit Windows from the start menu and choose restart in DOS mode, the drivers will load, show you the drive letter assigned to the CD-ROM and if everything is OK you should be able to access the contents of the CD-ROM.
*To return to Windows after using those drivers in DOS mode you have to press Control+Alt+Del to restart the computer, if you type "exit" or "win" Windows will probably fail to load properly.
SBIDED95.EXE is just a self extracting ZIP file for DOS, but some web browsers may block the download considering it a dangerous file, if that happens to you normally in the same warning window there is some kind of advanced option to continue the download, otherwise you can try using another browser. Maybe some antivirus might want to block it too, coming directly from the Creative official website it shouldn't really have any viruses and MS-DOS executables won't work on Windows 10 anyway.