98se Installation, version B

[pinnochio]

What are the most simple commands required to
install windows 98se from C Drive and not from the CD Drive
?????

I already know FDisk, Format, and Setup.

-P

 

[edfair]

cd \setupplace
setup

But that leaves a lot of room for improvement because you don't use fdisk or format on the C drive from the C drive.

Perhaps you will give better info about what you are trying to do. That will lead to better information and will probably get you some additional insight about the different ways you can go about it.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[pinnochio]

PC, no name, I put together did fine until windows 98
went from scandisk check to setup will now whatever
windows 98 setup, progress bar to 100%, then freeze.
Over and over, changed CD, A Drive, Cables, Ram.

I was wondering should this happen again with all
different hardware parts, how to install from C,
which others have mentioned in the past and now I
see why this manuever is sometimes needed.

Power Supply, brand new, cheap with case blew out
after 2 hours. Another first and possible cause
for freezes as installation begins.

-P

 

[Freestone]

http://www.duxcw.com/digest/Howto/software/windows/upgrade/inst98.htm

Method 1

then as edfair stated earlier:

c:
cd c:\windows\options\cabs
setup

 

[edfair]

Sounds like the hard drive has problems. You might want to try the manufacturer's diagnostics.

I've kind of standardized my install sequence to:
boot floppy and fdisk to create a DOS partition about 1gb
activate the partition
boot floppy and format the DOS partition /s for system
boot hard and install DOS utilities and CD access
fdisk and create extended/logical drive d:
boot hard and format d:
xcopy CD root to C:\w98sein
xcopy CD\win98 to c:\w98sein\win98
rename autoexec.bat to auto.bat & config.sys to conf.sys
cd w98sein
setup and put windows on D:

This is somewhat different from how others do it and is overkill on the pathing but it works for me, in my environments.

But I suspect that you would still have problems if you did it my way.

 

[ceh4702]

This version of MS Win98 se verb does not have a format command to transfer the operating system files to make a bootable drive. But the SYS command transfers the System files.

SYS A: C:

or maybe

SYS C: from the A Drive.

If you boot from the win98SE B boot disk, then it generates a drive letter for a RAM Drive, which may move one of your drives to another drive letter. I think this usually affects the Optical Drives. The Boot Disk is pretty good.

I like to take an older drive and completely redo it. If you have a drive utility you can download from the manufacturer. It is advantageous to write zeros to the entire drive and then format it. This erases everything that could possibly be on any part of the drive including the master boot record. The FDISK can be used to set up partitions and reformat it. What this does is it forces the drive to physically test every writable location on the drive.

You can also run SCANDISK or whatever it is called. When you install the OS Win98 setup disk usually tries to run this. I think you can skip it. However, I think you have to have some kind of extenede or virtual memory device driver installed to run it like MEMSYS.EXE or something like that. On a fresh format it is probably OK to just skip it, but SCANDISK attempts to mark all the bad sectors on the drive so the install will not attemt to use any of them.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[edfair]

I forgot to mention that 98SE as delivered has a fdisk that creates fat16 partitions (2.1gb). There is a downloadable fdisk that creates fat32 partitions. That would be better to use with the bootdisk to create the D:
I keep both on my install bootdisk.

 

[dglienna]

You need a Win98 boot disk, usually. I went thru trouble trying to remove a PartitionMagic partition. DOS 6.22 boot disk wouldn't do it. Had to use 3 diskettes before I could finally get a clean drive. Tomorrow, we try to fix a client's machine that wants to run a 20 year old app, and wants it restored to her new(er) PIII 600mhz.

-David
2006 Microsoft Valueable Professional (MVP)
2006 Dell Certified System Professional (CSP)

 

[edfair]

When you get to the newer systems you probably need to have bootable CDs of the various operating systems. Kind of a waste of time to temporarily install then remove a floppy drive when the systems are designed for booting and installing from CD.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.