Computer Help!!!

Dynotrick

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2002 Protege5
Ok so I'm helping out a friend in setting up his "new" computer that he got second hand. it's a 75mhz pentium with 48mb ram and the BIOS doesn't support boot from the cdrom drive. my problem is that i'm trying to do a clean install of windows 98se but can't access the cdrom from dos (i've already formatted the HD) i've tried several different version of the windows boot disk and i can't read the cdrom drive. i end up getting the Drive Not Ready. Abort, Retry, Fail? prompt, i can get onto the drive in dos but no access it. ie. i get to n:> but no further (bang) (bang) (bang) . any suggestions??? please help!!!!
 
Dynotrick said:
i think i made it clear that is what i'm doing but it is not working the way it should.
Are you actually loading the mscdex driver and stuff in the autoexec.bat and config.sys in dos? If not, then the drive name for the cdrom might just come from the bios. If that's the case, the drive name (letter) is useless to you.

You might want to try this site for some bootdisks. http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
Those should work for you - they did for me.

Ben
 
Dynotrick said:
Ok so I'm helping out a friend in setting up his "new" computer that he got second hand. it's a 75mhz pentium with 48mb ram and the BIOS doesn't support boot from the cdrom drive. my problem is that i'm trying to do a clean install of windows 98se but can't access the cdrom from dos (i've already formatted the HD) i've tried several different version of the windows boot disk and i can't read the cdrom drive. i end up getting the Drive Not Ready. Abort, Retry, Fail? prompt, i can get onto the drive in dos but no access it. ie. i get to n:> but no further (bang) (bang) (bang) . any suggestions??? please help!!!!

You need a windows 98 startup disk, which you can make from another computer that has it, its under the options for My Computer (I believe). That would load the CD Rom drivers to run a win98 cd through DOS. You know come to think of it, would that computer even support win98!!!???? My cell phone has more power than that computer! Not trying to be a jackass but seriously :p
 
yeah windows 98 will not run on that machine at all, it wouldnt even install

sucks i hope he didnt pay to much for it
 
Last edited:
actually this computer should run win98 fine. min req. are 486x66mhz pentium w/ 32mb ram :) i have tried the bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com and another one from http://home.ptd.net/~don5408/win98/install/clean.html
the second one loads a different driver and assigns the drive a different letter but has the same problem.

Are you actually loading the mscdex driver and stuff in the autoexec.bat and config.sys in dos?

so i should edit autoexec.bat and config.sys on the bootdisk to make sure it is loading the right driver? i'll take a look at that tonight, might be the answer.

btw this is a friend's computer that he got for free, and i have win95 to fall back on if i have to, but of course the same problem will arise because win95 is also on a CD!!

any other suggestions would be great!!!! :)
 
Yeah, win98 should run fine on that machine. Or you could always go with freebsd. Although for the average user - I would recommend sticking with win98, less headaches.

Of course, if it was mine, I'd load dos 6.22. Plenty of great games from that hardware era. Doom, Quake, Descent, All the Lucasarts games, Tex Avery series, The Incredible Machine series, seventh guest, myst, 11th hour, test drive, corridor 7, Duke Nukem 3D.

Best bet, use google and search for abandonware. You should be able to find plenty.
 
Dynotrick said:
bump for more suggestions.
install his Hard Drive in your machine, copy the WIN98 directory from your Windows98 CD onto his HD (which should give you all the .CAB files and the SETUP.EXE)... then put the HD back in his computer, boot to a dos prompt then run setup off of the HD from that Win98 directory... (bypass the CD-Rom altogether). Then once you have windows installed, your CD-Rom should work from here on out automatically.. (the glory of plug-n-play.. (blarf) )
 
im confused ? why even boot in dos? Why not go into bios and set CD rom to boot first then floppy then HD. and just let the computer work its magic. I don't know about 98 to much. I am a NT4 and win2000 and redhat guy. But that is how all that stuff works.

when ever i get a computer i set the CD drive to look for boot first. Floppies are becoming alot more scarce these days!
 
fkmp5 said:
install his Hard Drive in your machine, copy the WIN98 directory from your Windows98 CD onto his HD (which should give you all the .CAB files and the SETUP.EXE)... then put the HD back in his computer, boot to a dos prompt then run setup off of the HD from that Win98 directory... (bypass the CD-Rom altogether). Then once you have windows installed, your CD-Rom should work from here on out automatically.. (the glory of plug-n-play.. (blarf) )
that sounds like the easiest idea yet!! why didn't i think of that (hand)
one thing though, his HD is only 1GB, is that going to be a problem when running win98 setup?
 
computerGeek said:
im confused ? why even boot in dos? Why not go into bios and set CD rom to boot first then floppy then HD. and just let the computer work its magic. I don't know about 98 to much. I am a NT4 and win2000 and redhat guy. But that is how all that stuff works.

when ever i get a computer i set the CD drive to look for boot first. Floppies are becoming alot more scarce these days!
let me refer you back to the problem and you can answer your own question :)

Dynotrick said:
Ok so I'm helping out a friend in setting up his "new" computer that he got second hand. it's a 75mhz pentium with 48mb ram and the BIOS doesn't support boot from the cdrom drive.
 
Dynotrick said:
that sounds like the easiest idea yet!! why didn't i think of that (hand)
one thing though, his HD is only 1GB, is that going to be a problem when running win98 setup?
you *should* be fine, although you may want to delete those cab files off the HD after you get windows98 installed..

good luck..
 
JeRNuT said:
Ditch the computer all together and go to a local computer shop and buy a deciently fast new computer for $300
the best advice right there... 75Mhz????? damn... run win 3.1 on that POS
 
Make sure you format th HD as a system drive, not just a regular drive. To do this you type something along the lines of

format c: /s


I once copied the install files for Windows 95 or 98 (I forget) numerous floppies. After they were all on the HD I installed it off there.
 
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