Page 1 of any clever bods able to offer me advice on installing windows 98 PLEASE??

I am trying to install a legal version of Win 98 onto a formated hard disc and am not getting very far :-(

I have a boot disc which loads up the cdrom drive so I can read from the CD - hurrah, got some success then??

the problem I have is the message saying that the cd file setup.exe on the windows disc will not run in DOS mode

how do I get the computer to run the file?

also using fdisk i have an extended dos partition that show logical drives exist but I cant view them or delete them so something strange going on there too. Don`t know if its relevant but I`ve detailed it just in case.

here`s hoping someone reading this can give me a pointer and, if you can thanks in advance for any help given

biker

It`s been a while since I have installed W98. Remember that when you use the boot disk it shfits the drive letters up one. So your CD will probably be E and not D.

The way I used to do it was to boot into dos, then from the prompt type format c: (or something like that). I`d get a couple of warnings and click yes on them and then the C drive would format. I`d boot up using the floopy boot disk, browse to the CD drive and type setup, then it would all start.

How many partitions do you have etc?

If you`ve got MSN I am on now kuyeknomgniylf[at]moc.liamtoh

Good Luck

Nick

Sounds like your installation disk is the window 98 upgrade version which obviously needs windows already installed to upgrade from :-).
If you have windows 95 install that first, the run your 98 disk.

You may have to rerun fdisk and delete all your partitons including your primary section then reformat the disk to sort your drives problem.

The best advice of course is get a professional to sort it for you,
shouldn`t cost very much and may be cheaper than a new drive.

KYWY - my disk isn`t the upgrade it is the full monty. I`ve tried to delete all partitions but it says I cant as I have logical drives assigned but fdisk won`t let me see the logical drives in order for me to delete them and I have tried all available choices methodically ! Is there another way to blast all the partition info off and start from scratch?

FLYING MONKEY - managed to get the MSN up and running (haven`t used it before) but you`d gone so I`ll keep an eye out for you.

I am at sworgrekib[at]moc.liamtoh

thanks 2 you all for replying but I`m not there yet!
still at least the head scratching keeps me out of the bargain bucket forums!

biker

Biker
If your brave enough and your bios allows it you could low level format the drive.
If its a newish large capacity drive it may be easier to get your local computer repair shop to do it, I would have thought about £ 20.00 max depending on where you live.
Good luck :-)

I would advise you to get the ZAP utility from :

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

This lets you wipe all of the partition info and start again from scratch.

As for the "DOS mode" error, I`m not sure, but try running SETUP.EXE at the A: prompt (i.e. from the Windows 98 boot floppy), rather than from the CD.


Mike

Ramblings that may be useful:

fdisk /MBR fixes the master boot record of the disk drive if its been corrupted.

Have you installed any other OS on the disc? (would explain the partition problem)

Does the fdisk program ask about enabling large disc support when you run it?

Which setup program are you trying to run? (The path name here would be useful)

Try entering the bios as your computer boots (pressing Del or Esc) and switching the boot device so that it boots from CD-Rom first, instead of your C drive. Restart Windows with the CD in the Drawer and you should be able to install that way.

Thanks all for the feedback. I am gradually trying your suggestions out and will see what happens
Biker (not quite at breaking point yet) :-)
cheers

I just got rid of XP on a laptop over the weekend and replaced it with Win2K. Have you checked the BIOS startup options? I was pleasently surprised to find "setup from CD ROM" in there which cut straight into the Win2K setup options and let me nuke the existing OS partition in a matter of minutes.

Very handy.