Win 98se reinstal problems

[Evanhoe]

sometimes the message that you see on your pc appears in mine; i have solved it disabling the search of floppy at startup in bios setup

After this you have to insert the boot disk for reinstalling

Newbie1

Hi Newbie 1,

I tried your suggestion without success,I keep getting the same error message.I was'nt 100% sure on how to do this,so anywhere in the BIOS where it mentioned "Legacy Floppy" I Disabled and re booted with the "Win 98 start up Disk" !

Was there a specific way of doing this? Thanks.

VAN

[Evanhoe]

Thanks Fred.......

Quote:now because you have reformated already, I suggest that you restart your PC with the boot floppy inserted, and do as above (without re-reformating).

I've done that a dozen times and,I keep getting that darn Error Message each time,

I'm getting desperate,as this is my wife's Computer and I'm being hounded to fix it (smile).Thanks.

VAN

[jaclaz]

Definitely it seems like you have some problems in putting the DOS System files on C:.

Maybe you should re-start from the beginning.

Get a DOS 7.x Win9x) bootdisk and boot from it, this one is suitable:

http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/98.html

http://www.allbootdisks.com/downloads/Disk...No_Ramdrive.exe

Run FDISK and create one or more partiions from scratch.

Reboot.

Run FORMAT C: /s

Take the floppy out and try to boot.

jaclaz

[Mijzelf]

When you've got antivirus stuff in the BIOS setup, disable it before trying to format C:. This 'feature' disables writing to the bootsector.

[Fredledingue]

Thanks Fred.......

Quote:now because you have reformated already, I suggest that you restart your PC with the boot floppy inserted, and do as above (without re-reformating).

I've done that a dozen times and,I keep getting that darn Error Message each time,

I'm getting desperate,as this is my wife's Computer and I'm being hounded to fix it (smile).Thanks.

VAN

That's surprising because, normaly, when you boot on the floppy, it should work no matter what's on drives other than A:.

I can see either a hardware defect (floppy drive or memory) or the floppy disk damaged/unreadable.

[Ponch]

Grab one of those floppies Jaclaz pointed to, create the physical media, try it in your other PC (try to boot from it, don't format anything of course). If it works, and preferably if you have CDROM access as well after boot, retry on your 1st machine. If it does not work, your floppy drive is defct or you haven't setup your BIOS properly (do you see the led on when it tries to read the floppy at startup ?).

If you can't bot from floppy, try to make a bootable CDROM with that floppy as the "boot image" and try to boot from it.

If you can do that and get a letter for the cdrom after boot, then you are saved. Pop in you Win98 install cd and launch the install.

Edited November 20, 2007 by Ponch

[Evanhoe]

Hi Jaclaz,

As you suggested,I went to this site "http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/98.html" to Download v 7.x and they only had v 6.25.From Wikipedia I saw their mention of V 7.1 and Googled and downloaded v 7.1 from Vetusware.com.Of course this had to go on a CD as it is 2.6 mb.I also downloaded on a Floppy Disk your other suggestion as below: http://www.allbootdisks.com/downloads/Disk...No_Ramdrive.exe

Although,I did'nt know whether that would reboot the Computer,I tried it and got this error message"Invalid system disk,replace the disk,and then press any key" So much for that!

Now,as far as v 7.1 Boot Disk (2.6 mb),it includes 2 versions,that is v 7.1.2 and 7.1.3,each at 1.44 mb.Of course each was too large for a Floppy Disk!I burned v 7.1.2 on a cd-rw disk, (re adjusted the BIOS to cd-rom) and tried re booting with it.I got the same error message as above.

I inserted a disk in the Floppy Disk Drive of my Win XP puter,and under Format I noticed that,I could create a MS-DOS Startup Disk,so I did one,and rebooted the Win 98 puter with it,and to my surprise, it opened with MS Windows Millennium.and " A:\>" !!My joy was short lived. I entered many different codes and combinations at this prompt, to no avail.I always got that dreaded error message.I guess the above will only work with XP !Can you or anyone else provide more suggestions to resolve this problem.Thanks.

VAN

[Evanhoe]

When you've got antivirus stuff in the BIOS setup, disable it before trying to format C:. This 'feature' disables writing to the bootsector.

Thanks for that Mijzelf,I'LL keep that in mind.

VAN

[Evanhoe]

Hi Fredledingue,

Quote:That's surprising because, normaly, when you boot on the floppy, it should work no matter what's on drives other than A:.

I can see either a hardware defect (floppy drive or memory) or the floppy disk damaged/unreadable.

The Floppy Drive seems ok(as evidenced by reply to Jaclaz above).As far as the Floppy disk damaged/unreadable as you suggest.How else can I check that out?It worked ok a couple of weeks ago! Thanks for your help.

VAN

[Evanhoe]

Quote:Grab one of those floppies Jaclaz pointed to, create the physical media, try it in your other PC (try to boot from it, don't format anything of course). If it works, and preferably if you have CDROM access as well after boot, retry on your 1st machine. If it does not work, your floppy drive is defct or you haven't setup your BIOS properly (do you see the led on when it tries to read the floppy at startup ?).

If you can't bot from floppy, try to make a bootable CDROM with that floppy as the "boot image" and try to boot from it.

If you can do that and get a letter for the cdrom after boot, then you are saved. Pop in you Win98 install cd and launch the install.

Hi Ponch,

I think,I've pretty well answered your above queries,in my reply to Jaclaz !Thanks for trying to help,really appreciated here.

VAN

[jaclaz]

@Evanhoe

I really don't get what you are talking about, (v 6.25, 7.12, etc.)

Just:

1) Download this file on a machine running Win9x/NT/2K/XP/2003:

http://www.allbootdisks.com/downloads/Disk...No_Ramdrive.exe

2) double click on it, insert a blank formatted floppy and let it create the 98 (DOS 7.1) bootdisk

3) insert the floppy in the unbootable machine and boot from it

4) at the A:\ prompt type FDISK [ENTER]

Follow this guide on how to use FDISK:

http://fdisk.radified.com/

you need to create a Primary Active partition

5) reboot the machine leaving the floppy in

6) at the A:\ prompt type FORMAT C: /s [ENTER]

7) remove the floppy and reboot the machine

jaclaz

Edited November 22, 2007 by jaclaz

[Fredledingue]

Hi Fredledingue,

Quote:That's surprising because, normaly, when you boot on the floppy, it should work no matter what's on drives other than A:.

I can see either a hardware defect (floppy drive or memory) or the floppy disk damaged/unreadable.

The Floppy Drive seems ok(as evidenced by reply to Jaclaz above).As far as the Floppy disk damaged/unreadable as you suggest.How else can I check that out?It worked ok a couple of weeks ago! Thanks for your help.

VAN

Remove the floppy drive and test it on another computer. Nothing from what I'v read above proves that the floppy drive is working properly. Maybe it works only unproperly.

More puzzling is that you got the same error message when attempting to boot from the bootable CD-R. Here again it's not a scientific proof that the floppy drive is working, but rather that such type of boot disk (on CD-RW on top of that) is not compatible with your system.

If the floppy drive is not working it will explain many things.

I'v replaced my floppy drive twice already. And one week before I did, it was also still working.

Hardware problem are those we loose the most time on because we thing they are software problems.

HTH

[Ponch]

Now,as far as v 7.1 Boot Disk (2.6 mb),it includes 2 versions,that is v 7.1.2 and 7.1.3,each at 1.44 mb. Of course each was too large for a Floppy Disk!

what kind of floppy are we talking about here ???? 1.44 is the size of a floppy.

I inserted a disk in the Floppy Disk Drive of my Win XP puter,and under Format I noticed that,I could create a MS-DOS Startup Disk,so I did one,and rebooted the Win 98 puter with it,and to my surprise, it opened with MS Windows Millennium.and " A:\>"

I didn't know XP makes WinME boot disks. I can't test here as I'm typing on a portable without floppy. Anybody confirm ?

[jaclaz]

I didn't know XP makes WinME boot disks. I can't test here as I'm typing on a portable without floppy. Anybody confirm ?

Sure it does , though it is not a "full" floppy.

FYI, some info about it and some other ways to create it/get the files:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16745

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=18896

jaclaz

Edited November 23, 2007 by jaclaz

[Evanhoe]

Hi Jaclaz,

Geez,I thought I was exposing what I had done quite clearly! I guess I'm going to work harder at it(Smile)

As per your renewed instructions, I have re-downloaded" http://www.allbootdisks.com/downloads/Disks/Windows_98_Boot_Disk_Download49/Windows98_SE_No_Ramdrive.exe

on my Win XP machine (I can't on the Win 98 one),and did as you suggested in 2 to 7.While it was doing it's thing,I noticed it detected" Secondary Slave CD Rom,which is E Drive" Usually it detects The D Drive,which is the Secondary Master CD Rw Drive !!I finally choose "Start Computer with CD Rom support" Later it shows"Success loading Drive D" then I get this"Your CD Rom is Drive E" !

At the "A:\> prompt I type in D:\setup /P i and I get"Bad command or file name" I then restart,and tried with "E:\setup /p i" and got this:"CDR 101 not reading drive E" abort....

BTW: I downloaded and read and re read the following as you asked" Follow this guide on how to use FDISK:

http://www.msfn.org/board/ipb_seo.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffdisk.radified.com%2FI really don't know where to go from here.Can you provide more help with this.Thanks.

VAN