Invalid Drive Specification

[SeanGilbreth]

I was running a computer with Windows 98, but I wanted to put Windows 95 on it so I did a format of the HDD in DOS and now when I try to change the directory to my CD-ROM (D: ), I get "Invalid Drive Specification". What do I do?

Thanks!

 

[vacunita]

Boot from a Win98 floppy with CD support. You can find some at

http://www.bootdisk.com.

And then you'll be able to change to the CD.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[wolluf]

what exactly are you trying to do? If you want to install win95, find a win95 boot floppy with CD support at the site vacunita linked. You can then boot from it and install 95 from there.

 

[edfair]

Probably would be better to do a fdisk and format since there are some subtle differences between the 98 and 95.

You also need to be careful with the versions of DOS you use as some things you can do under the 98 version are not compatible with the 95 or earlier versions.

The usual problem is that the hard drive is not in proper mode and the CD moves, or you use a boot disk with ramdisk capabilities and the cd moves to E: or higher.

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

 

[SeanGilbreth]

Okay, now after a long time I finally got and used a boot disk, but when I try to boot from it, it asks me to remove the disk before it can begin booting.

Also, if I try to run boot95a.exe in DOS it says this program cannot be run while in DOS. What should I do?

Thanks!

 

[wolluf]

Your last post confuses me!

Is boot95a.exe what you downloaded from bootdisk.com? If so, you should run it in windows - it will prompt you to insert a floppy and then create a 95 boot floppy for you (for the original version of 95 I'd think from the file name - so no fat32 support. If your version of 95 is actually OSR2 or later, get the boot95b.exe file).

Once the boot floppy has been created, you can boot your machine with it (assuming the bios boot order puts boot from floppy first on the list). It will load a driver for your CD drive and assign a drive letter to that drive (said drive letter will appear onscreen). As you say you've formatted the drive you should now be ready to install 95. Put the 95 install CD in the drive and either change to the drive letter and trype setup or type x:\setup (where X: is the CD drive) and you should be away.

 

[vacunita]

I agree with Wolluf, the boot95.exe file is used to create the floppy.

Wherever you downloaded it, double click it and it will tell you to insert a disk into drive A: to create the boot floppy.

Once its done you can boot from the floppy it created.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[SeanGilbreth]

Now I have used a bootdisk, I can ask it to run setup, however I get this message when I try:

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Please wait while setup initializes...

Cannot create temp directory.

If you have HPFS or NTFS installed on your hard drive, you will need to create an MS-DOS boot partition to set up Windows.

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What should I try now?

Thanks!

 

[vacunita]

2 months later...

Have you made a partition the win95 setup can use?

Use FDISK from the boot floppy and create a partition.

If the drive is to big, win95 may have trouble addressing it all. I believe the max size for a partition that Win95 can use was 2GB. So try partitioning the drive in 2. one 2GB for win95 and the rest for files or whatever.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.