Reinstall of Windows 95 - step by step

[Ngolem]

Hi...I have an old P90 PC with Windows 95 on it. It has a 2.0 gig Samsung and 1.2 gig Western Digital drive on it and 32 meg of Ram.

The operating system has been working fine and frankly it operates faster and holds more on its desktop than a lot of other PCs...but now the operating system is a bit cranky and I should reinstall Win95 (it has been 8 years and one HD change/addition).

Could someone give me a step by step walk through the proceedure, please...

The 2.0 gig is the C drive with the operating system.

Should I uninstall everything first (the data directories are on the D drive)?

Can I boot the machine in the normal manner then reformat the C Drive?

I am dumb when it comes to something like this....Please advise in as gory detail as possible ....I need it.

Jim Broadbent

 

[Seegee]

things you will need:
bootable floppy disk
Windows 95 CD
Windows 95 license number (should be on the Windows 95 manual, if you still have it)

I will try to make this is easy as possible...

It may be of benefit to write down COM port settings and IRQ settings for your modem(if one is installed) and your mouse, and any other devices such as a sound card..it could save you from a head ache later.

1. make sure you have a boot disk. So you can boot the computer up with a floppy with CD-ROM support. You can make a boot disk from Windows 98 in the add/remove software applet, using the startup tab.

2. insert the bootable floppy into into the floppy drive and reboot the computer with the Windows 95 CD in the CD-Drive. (also make sure your computer will boot from the floppy drive by checking the boot sequence in the BIOS, for the age of the PC it should already be set to).

3. after booting from the floppy disk you will be given options on how you want to boot...choose "boot computer with CD-ROm support"

4. after a minute or two you will be at the A:\ prompt. type "format C:" without quotes you will get a warning stating that all data on drive C: will be lost are you sure you want to format...type "y" and hit enter. the drive will be formatted.

5. after formatting is complete you will be asked if you want to label the drive, this is optional if you wish to bypass it just hit enter.

6. now it is time to install Windows 95. you should be at the A:\ prompt again at this point. type cd X: where X: is the CD-ROM drive letter( most likely it should be "E:" )

7. Now you are in the E:\ drive. Type "setup.exe" without quotes and this will begin the Windows 95 setup installer. Just follow the on screen instructions to complete the installation.

8. if you are prompted to remove the floppy disk from the floppy drive make sure you do it, or else when the computer reboots you will boot from the floppy instead of the hard drive.

good luck!

 

[Ngolem]

Thank you so much for your response...I'll let you know how it goes

Jim Broadbent

 

[mattjurado]

Since this is your first time through reinstalling, I'd backup your data to be safe, or unplug the drive with the data for now...

Matt J.

 

[diogenes10]

Site with a lot of background info:

http://www.dewassoc.com/support/

 

[xchefpeter]

Instead of trying to reinstall you should look at clean up of your HD's. Run chkdsk and defrag, empty tmp files and move as much data as you can to your D: drive or to floppy. YOu might want to look at your paging file and set it as a static max size. I would do any and all of these before doing a reinstal just for the sake of reinstal.

xchefpeter mcp

 

[Ngolem]

I believe I need the reinstall since Win95 is getting cranky about non-fatal corruption of some dll's...for example the "Start Arrow" no longer appears on booting up.

I don't care about the games that are on the machine and it is easy enough to islote my word97 doc file and Excel files on the other drive...as well as graphics and other misc data files.

Also the real important stuff is backed up well.

I am thinking of uninstalling games that are placed on my D drive first so there will be no confusing when I try to reload them...seems like a reasonable thing to do first.

I will do the re-install tommorrow so I appreciate all of your advice.

Jim Broadbent