Do the laptop have a floppy drive? If so you can use a Windows 98 boot disk to enter DOS and then manually execute the setup from the CD. If you don't have aboot disk you can create one on a seperate computer with the 98 CD.
The Win98 boot disk can be made from Win98 or from a DOS boot with CD-ROM support. Just insert a blank formatted disk in the A drive. Insert the Win98 CD in the CD-ROM drive and go to CD-ROM\Tools\mtsutil\fat32ebd.
Run the file fat32ebd and it will create a Win98 boot disk with CD-ROM support and the necessary files to run setup from the CD-ROM.
Try the boot disk by shutting down and using it to boot. Make sure BIOS is set for booting A: then C:.
Or you can download a exe that will create one for you from
http://www.bootdisk.com/