Dell latitude Laptop 2

[iMacDan]

I have an old dell latitude lappy, recently someone formatted it! (no i promise it wasn't me!) Anyway, I have never set it up from scratch and when I boot up from win98 startup it can't find a cd rom drive due to not being plugged into the modular bay because the floppy is in the modular bay?????

Does that make sense to anyone?

So how do I boot up then run win 98 setup on cd rom?

Thanks in advance

 

[ag6969]

First off, to save you some time, Win98 CDs are usually bootable, if that is not the case, this is fairly simple.

First, make sure the hard drive has a drive letter (C and is formatted. Boot with your Win98 bootdisk.
1. At the A:\ prompt,type the following:

sys c:

If you get an error about bad command or filename, type: format c: /q /s <enter>
This will perform a quick format and make the hard drive bootable
While still at the A:\> prompt, type:

copy mscdex.exe c:copy oakcdrom.sys c:\ (or try oak*.* c:\)
I haven't got a Win98 boot disk handy, but I'm sure that it's OAKCDROM.SYS.

2. Switch to C:\ by typing C, then type the following:

copy con config.sys <enter>
device=oakcdrom.sys /d:0001
(or replace oakcdrom.sys with the name of the file copied over)
Then press CTRL Z together.

3. At the C:\ prompt again, enter the following:
copy con autoexec.bat
mscdex /d:0001
Then press CTRL Z together.

Shut down the notebook, insert the CDROM drive, and boot with no CDs installed. Your CDROM should be detected. Note that you could copy over himem.sys, but that's not necessary. Just type setup /is from the CDROM prompt (probably d:\>)to skip scandisk scan when installing.

Adam Garbutt
MCSE2k,CNA,A+,NET+

 

[SuzanUnicorn11]

There's a cable that you can order that costs about $15 that will let you connect the floppy drive to the parallel port and put the CD-ROM drive in the bay.

 

[adkmom]

If you have a boot floppy you should be able to start there & get the CD & other important files. Then,can't you shut down,remove the floppy drive,swap your CD drive into that bay & go from there? I have a Dell laptop with those swap bays & I don't understand the problem, I guess?

T

 

[iMacDan]

Ok great. BUT!!!

I have now got a message saying that windows had detected an nt partition?

I have ran fdisk and tried to delete but it won't let me due to extended partion but I can't delete that either!

How do I get rid of this NT partition so I can just install and have none of this hassle!!!

Thanks once again

Dan