Installing OS over firewire 1

[LucidOndine]

So here is my situation. A friend of mine had a laptop that decided to bite the dust, so, she gave it to me to fix.

I replaced the harddrive, but realized that there was absolutely no way to boot it. There was only an external CD-ROM drive and it goes through a PCMIA backpack device that either isn't atapi or doesn't like to boot at all. There is no floppy device and the bios is really old and doesn't like to boot off of anything else.

My next solution was to pull the 2.5" laptop hard drive out, put it in a firewire drive enclosure and install the necessary OS that way. Unfortunately, windows does not like being installed over firewire, though I can copy all the files over anyhow.

Ideally, I would like to make the drive fat32 (which I can do) make it laptop-bootable (which I can't do), and install windows 98 directly from the hard drive (which would be easy if I could just get it to boot). Does anyone have any ideas?

I've tried using Bart's Boot tools and Mkbt.exe utility but with no luck. If only I could format the entire hard drive as a system rescue disk, then I could boot and load windows that way.

If I had another laptop laying around with a built-in cd-rom drive, I could just swap the hard drives and install it that way. Unfortunately I don't have one

Kudos to anyone who can figure this out.

Joel Landsteiner

 

[YellowOnline]

Well, I didn't work with FireWire yet, but am I'm right if I understand that you have access to the external hard drive the way you also have it with an internal drive (so it just adds as drive it in the drivelist, eg X, but it just won't let you install something over the FireWire connection?
Sorry for this <i>reprise</i>, but I want to make sure that the problem is exactly what I have in mind.
If so, can you get to a command prompt on the HD? In that case you could just try format <drive>: /s to make it bootable.

Peace,

Yellow

 

[edfair]

Probably would suggest pulling the HD, creating a primary in DOs large enough to hold the DOS and the windows install stuff, then an extended in the native OS format to take the rest.
Boot to DOS and install the windows on the extended. Hopefully the hardware detector will find everything it needs.

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

 

[LucidOndine]

You are correct in saying that I can get a command prompt. In this situation, the command prompt is K:, the next available drive letter.

Unfortunately, you cannot use the format command plus the /s tag to make it a system bootable disk. It doesn't like to do this at all.

edfair-- Ideally this would be a great solution, except that you cannot make a bootable DOS partition over a firewire connection. I can't seem to make any bootable partition on it.

I have tried another option recently. I resized one of my desktop partitions, and installed a dos partition on to it. I then made it bootable and copied /win98 to the drive so I could install without a CD-Rom Drive.

I then made an image with Symantec Ghost 2003, and then restored the image onto the firewire drive. I replaced this hard drive back into the laptop in hopes that it would reboot, but it was no go; after it recognized the HD in cmos once again it gave me the dreaded 'No OS detected' message.

Any other suggestions?

 

[edfair]

I should have specified mounting the drive in other than firewire. I was thinking on the line of putting it in a laptop where you could get CD capability. Or using one of the 2.5 to 3.5 adapters as an additional drive in a desktop machine.

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

 

[LucidOndine]

I have thought of that, though I don't readilly have the 40 to 44 pin adapter. I was thinking that I was spending way too much time on this problem so a few days ago I purchased the adapter. It should be here next week; we'll see how it goes.

Joel

 

[LucidOndine]

There are two solutions I’ve found for this problem. One is to create a partition on a desktop PC, install Windows 98, then create an image with Symantec’s Ghost (Version 8) 2003. This only works if the drive is a primary dos drive and bootable in it’s own right!

The latest version of Ghost supports firewire drives, and then you can restore the image onto the firewire drive, allowing the drive to be installed into the OS once again, and have it boot.

The second solution is to purchase a 40 to 44 pin adapter online. This is probably the easier of the two solutions, and the part only costs about $15 shipped. Once installed into a desktop PC, format the drive as FAT32 bootable and copy the win98 directory directly to the hard drive.

Place the hard drive back into the laptop, boot, and install Windows 98.

Alternatively, this solution is mirrored at

http://www.stolaf.edu/people/landstej/computer_files/Page440.htm

Many thanks to everyone who contributed!

 

[TekTippy4U]

You are correct in saying that I can get a command prompt. In this situation, the command prompt is K:, the next available drive letter.

Unfortunately, you cannot use the format command plus the /s tag to make it a system bootable disk. It doesn't like to do this at all.

not sure if i'm following along completely, but seems that if you can Partition/Format and get the whole \win98 directory onto the Lappy HDD, "and" you can get to a Command Prompt, then you can run Setup

in other words, if you can make the drive FAT32 - implies you used Fdisk, then all you need is the Format.com file to Format the drive after fdisking, run scandisk as well (all these are on a Win98Boot floppy and in the Old Dos directory on 98 CDROM..If you've an OEM 98, it's bootable....are you sure your BIOS isn't?

I'd keep trying to get the PCMCIA connection to work, cause others have installed OSs this way...may need correct drivers for it (PCMCIA, and possibly "Network" Boot in BIOS, or "Removable Devices" though not sure, as First boot device, instead of usual CDROM as first....try both..also may need the CDROM driver to load along with MSCDEX.EXE)...btw, an OEM CD will do all this automatically (load generic cdrom/scsi drivers like a startup floppy, along with tools/fdisk/format etc if you can get the BIOS to see the CDROM, through pcmcia.)
Maybe you can create an Image using Ghost containing ALL the correct drivers (basically a Full Win98 Startup floppy files), plus whatever may be necessary for PCMCIA

Were you able to create a Dir on the Drive to load the \win98 dir. to...using the MD command? and then COPY ...how was this done if the drive wasn't Formatted?
If it's formatted, you can run Setup from the Command prompt.

Possibly just too much hassle, just thought I'd throw it out there

TT4U

Notification:
These are just my thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions.
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[LucidOndine]

<quote>not sure if i'm following along completely, but seems that if you can Partition/Format and get the whole \win98 directory onto the Lappy HDD, "and" you can get to a Command Prompt, then you can run Setup</quote>

Yes, partitioning is done with fdisk and formatting is done with the format.com file with the /s tag as you guessed. This creates a bootable primary dos partition with the necessary bootable functionality.

In getting to format.com and fdisk however, I booted the drive with the win98 cd and so I was able to copy the entire win98 dir to the hard drive.

When I then removed this drive from my desktop and placed it back within the laptop, the computer would then be able to boot directly into dos. Running setup from the win98 command began the Windows 98 installation process as normal.

Hope this clarification helps for the 40-44 pin solution mentioned above.

Joel Landsteiner

 

[TekTippy4U]

edit;
hmm...
actually - on my OEM - Fdisk is in Base5.cab, though Format.com exists as Stand alone in the \Win98 dir and also in the EBD.cab which is inside the Base4.cab, as well as a version being in Tools\Oldmsdos.
My OEM will boot just like a Win98 Startup floppy if I choose to do so...and in doing so must uncompress a couple of .cabs cause I can always access Fdisk straight away, when Booting from CDROM with or without CDROM support.....either way the RAMDrive gets created upon boot. FWIW there's a third option when using OEM, which is Start Win98 Setup....which is the choice to use if no partitions exist....it'll see this and ask you to "configure unallocated Hard Disk space" at which point Fdisk is invoked, you create Parts and then Make Promary Active and reboot, choose Win98 Setup again and it'll start Formatting automatically.
sorry if this is long winded...

TT4U

Notification:
These are just my thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions.
Backup All Important Data/Docs

 

[LucidOndine]

That's ok-- it's good to flush this out for other people who are looking for an answer to this problem.

When booting from the Windows 98 OEM CD, you are given the option to hit any key to boot from a CD-Rom (the exact text differs as a function of your individual bios).

The next option is a menu that runs off of the windows 98 cd-rom. The three options are, 1) start windows 98 setup 2) Start ms-dos with cd-rom support and 3) start ms-dos

I chose option 2 with my solution. I then ran fdisk from the windows 98 SE OEM CD-rom-- If I recall right it's within the root directory of either the Ram drive.

The reason I did not choose option 1 and load win98 oem immediately is that I wanted to do as much of the install on the laptop itself so I would not be adding hardware support that will never exist again

Anyhow, after DOS booted up, I Fdisk(ed) c:, created a primary dos partion. I used format.com to format c: with the /s command to make the drive bootable in itself and copied the /win98 directory off of the CD onto the hard drive. I did not have to worry about extracting the .cab files at all-- I either had them on a recovery disk or found them on the CD.

The stand-alone bootable hard-drive then could be placed within any computer and windows 98 could be installed with little difficulty completely on the laptop.

Joel

P.S.

Due to an incredibly unfortunate set of boot options, the laptop had no pcmcia booting, no network booting, no disk-drive(though there was an option for it), and no internal cd-rom drive making it rather difficult to boot at all from a clean HD.

 

[TekTippy4U]

Ok great!
Then using the Adapter for Desktop connection was very necessary..yes? I didn't think you had it already
btw;
My OEM text first gives 2 options
1. Boot from Hard Disk
2. Boot from CDROM
( I can see diff BIOS and OEMs having diff text, yes)
Then the next 3 familiar choices

I say choose 1. Start Win98Setup 'twice' at first "only" to Fdisk and Format easily and automatically using No floppy whatsoever....and Scandisk will run automatically as well right before Formatting to check for errors on the drive.

IMO - No more Hardware support than necessary could possibly get added whether you run Setup from CDROM "or" from the Copied Win98 Directory located on HDD....makes no diff..all the setup files are in the win98 directory. The only diff is not having to Pop in CDROM to add a Win98 component later.....which can be changed in the REG later anyway (SourceDir Key), and then Copy the files over whever you like using Windows Explorer...much easier to me, and safer as No possible transference of disk corruption by using CDROM in future to Add/Remove.

Happy Computing and -- not a bad little web page there


TT4U

Notification:
These are just my thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions.
Backup All Important Data/Docs

 

[TekTippy4U]

Forgot to mention in closing...

In your case.....you absolutely needed to copy over the setup files to the HDD cause
A. You had no CDROM support
B. You couldn't possibly run install on the Desktop and then put the HDD into lappy and expect it to work...you must run setup on the install machine for setup to configure the Hardware correctly. (unless ofcourse you use a pre-made script and .inf that was customized, as is done with mass installs on same boxes)
just wanted to clarify my thoughts

TT4U

Notification:
These are just my thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions.
Backup All Important Data/Docs

 

[LucidOndine]

Thanks!

Yea, the webpage was something I've been playing with... geez Microsoft makes making webpages too easy...

*grumble grumble* back in the day when I used to write html with notepad... *grumble grumble*

Lucid