Ok, I have an old Compaq laptop I got from my parents. Its a pentium but low speed. Its still pretty good and I am going to use it for word processing for work. Its running windows 95. I am going to upgrade it a little bit.
The problem is I can't use the cd-rom drive. When I try to open the drive, it opens my recycling bin instead. Anyone know how to fix that so i can use the cd-rom drive to upgrade windows?

Allright maybe this sounds stupid but, Did you try open the recycle bin? I mean when the recycle bin opens when you try to open your cdrom drive maybe it also works the other way round...

Do you have anything of interest inside that notebook? Or you just want to do the upgrade just to escape some trouble?
Because if it is the latter i suggest you format the HDD and reinstall everything it will be for the best of you (you will be able to know what is exactly is inside and running on your notebook) and for your notebook (it will get rid of all that little trash which is hidden inside your registry and messes things up i.e. your CD-ROM with the Recycle bin)
Of course this is just a thought

If it's a Windows bug, installing Windows again over your current installation might actually help since it restores some settings without debilitating your programs. That's how I dealt with Win'95 troubles when I wasn't in the mood for finding out what was wrong.

Reinstall fixed it. Fortuantely there wasn't anything useful that i wanted on it. there were other probs too, deleted files never went anywhere, they just disappeared into limbo, even though I had it set to go to the bin.
Wierd thing computers they are.