Unable to wipe 98 machine 2

[siscokid1]

Hi,

I have a Compaq tower, kinda old, (I hate Compaq's)and
I want to wipe 98 off of it, and put xp or 2000. I go into
the bios and tell it to read from drive first, but it just
starts up again to 98.

I am at a loss as to why.

Any help, thankful

 

[torturedmind]

you could create a win98 bootup disk and fdisk the harddrive. if the pc could not find any os installed on the harddrive, it may search the other drives which may be a cd drive and start from there.

kilroy
philippines

"Once a king, always a king. But being a knight is more than enough."

 

[siscokid1]

Yup, just tried that, nuked the drive, now when booting it looks for the boot disk, not the cd :-( ...tried asking it
to run setup on cdrom to no avail.

 

[edfair]

When you boot from floppy do you get the option for CD support? Do you choose it?
Have generaly found it bo be best to fdisk the drive with the 32 bit version before trying to reload then on reboot the floppy will create a ramdisk on drive D and the CD becomes E.

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

 

[siscokid1]

Yes I do, and it is selected. C has been reformatted,
try to run setup on cd to no avail (cannot run in DOS mode)

 

[edfair]

Do you have a 98 CD or a 98 upgrade CD?
There is something about the story that doesn't add up.

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

 

[siscokid1]

No I do not have a 98 CD, I put in either a xp or w2k
in the CD drive and no ready.

 

[edfair]

My bad. I didn't go back to see that the swamp draining was to put XP or 2K on.
If using the boot floppy with CD support ends up with nothing visible from the CD I would suspect that the CD bay be bad. And that would explain the failure to attempt the install.
I'm assuming that the CMOS did hold the boot order when you changed it.

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

 

[siscokid1]

I do not know much about Cmos, but it says primary - User. I
changed the Bios settings to 1st CD, second floppy and 3rd Scsi

I try and run setup from E (CD) to no avail.

 

[edfair]

Boot with a floppy with CD support. It will probably put the CD to E:. Put a CD in. Do "dir e:"(or wherever it puts it). If it doesn't do a directory you have a bad drive.


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

 

[Lemon13]

so u can access the cd? go to cd\i386 and run winnt.exe, that starts the dos version of setup.

 

[siscokid1]

I can see the drive, but when I execute setup.exe it
says it is not a dos program. :-(

 

[BOKA]

You do not install Win2K or XP with setup.exe, just like Lemon13 noted, you need to run winnt.exe from \i386 directory on that CD.

 

[siscokid1]

I think I've got it.....COuldn't load 2000, but its running
XP, thanks for all the help.

 

[siscokid1]

Well, XP isn't running that great, (its only a 766 - 192 mb) and it keeps rebooting every once in a while. So I thought to try 2000. Well, when I run i386/winnt.exe, it says it needs smartdrv, so I am stuck atm :-(

 

[BOKA]

It has been awhile since I installed 2000, does it exit the setup after "smartdrv" message or gives you an option to continue? You could still continue, it will just take forever.
Sorry, I was not clear if you are booting from floopy or CD.

If you are booting from floppy, you can load smartdrv (you will need himem.sys loaded for that).

Or you can get boot disk image from here:

http://www.bootdisk.com/

Good luck.

 

[siscokid1]

It gave me a message, but would not continue, I am trying to boot from CD to no avail, so I boot from floppy with CD, I will try it again, as I am using a win98 bootdisk (win2k) would not fit on floppy

thanks

 

[BOKA]

See if smartdrv.exe file is on your boot floppy. You can just run it after boot, just type SMARTDRV and enter at the A:\> prompt.

Good luck.

 

[oisnds]

You will need startup disks for your Windows 2000, the CD doesn't seeem to be bootable.

From the Windows 2000 help -

To create setup disks

Insert a blank, formatted, 3.5-inch, 1.44-MB disk into the floppy disk drive.
Insert the Windows 2000 CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive.
Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type d:\bootdisk\makeboot a: (where d: is the drive letter assigned to your CD-ROM drive), and then click OK.
Follow the screen prompts.
Important

You will need four blank, formatted, 3.5-inch, 1.44-MB floppy disks. Label them Setup Disk One, Setup Disk Two, Setup Disk Three, and Setup Disk Four.

 

[siscokid1]

Thanks for the input,

I've loaded her up and it reboots every once in a while.

It is a 733mhz, with 192mb ram. I'm thinking it can't handle it and needs more Ram.