dell notebookQ: win 95 reinstall

hello,
i have lurked a little here to try and find an answer to a problem. i have
an old dell latitude laptop that was running win 95. it has been on the
shelf in the closet for a while and i would like to give it to a niece for
school. i tried to update windows to 2000, not quite the most current
windows but my thinking being it's better than 95.
anyway trouble started after going on line after installing win2000,
computer froze, updates never installed, stuck on "verifying windows version
is legal .." which it is.
so not to give up i figure the hell with the updates i'll go with it like it
was for now. when i reboot, or try to reboot all hell breaks loose. windows
won't start, i cant get anything but dos prompts, so i enter dos mode and
figure the hell with it i'll reformat and start again, i'm brave even if i'm
stooopid. format works, i have a boot disc and cd for win 95 and i'm off.
now i can boot up, but i am having a hard time getting cdrom to install.
laptop has interchangeable drive units.
i am now able to get a screen that displays:

"device driver not found: mscd001
no valid cdrom device selected
A:\>"

how bad have i F*&^% it up?!
direction would be appreciated
pete