Weird installation problem.

[wolf2x]

I'm trying to install 98 onto a workstation. I bootup off the cd/floppy just fine. Run setup. It starts and finishes scandisk with no problems. It goes to a black screen and says to "Please wait while setup initializes....Scanning system registry...Copying files needed for windows setup...Please remove any floppies and press any key to restart system". And that's it!

I reboot the system and if it boots off of the cd again it goes through the same thing as above...if I boot off of the harddrive it gives the usual error of "not being a system drive...replace disk...try again...blah, blah".

I've tried different motherboards, harddrives, & cd's/floppies. Also, FYI....I have the correct RAM and harddrive for this particular motherboard.

I do not get any other errors or any type of "hanging up".

Anyone with any ideas?

 

[edfair]

On restart it doesn't need the CD. But you have the CD as first in the boot chain. Use setup of CMOS to change boot order to floppy , hard drive, anything else.

Do you have BIOS virus check activive? Sounds like the boot sector didn't write. Use the boot floppy and fdisk to display the partition table and see whether the install created a partition and made it active.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[dermoyn]

I take it you have partitioned and formatted the hard drive in advance?

If yes, you could try copying over the CAB files onto your hard drive from the CD, remove the CD, run SETUP from the newly created directory and see what happens.

This should rule out a couple of posibilities: iffy CD Rom drive and/or iffy software. Often the copying process brings up an error if it's one of those that's at fault. And, hey, it just might work.

i.e.
Boot from a floppy that has CD support (And which contains XCOPY)

On C: make directory W98_cab i.e.
at C: type

md w98_cab

Insert your CD.

at your CD drive prompt (Let's pretend it's Z) type:

xcopy Z:\win98\*.* C:\w98_cab

When that's done remove the CD.
type:

C:
CD w98_cab
setup

And cross your fingers. This is actually the fastest way to install 9x systems. Also, it should never again ask you for the CD.

Post back with any exact error messages.

HIH
Dermot

 

[wolf2x]

Thanks for your suggestions.

Removing the cd wasn't the solution. I also tried copying the setup over onto the local harddrive and run the setup from there...still didn't work, I got the same errors on installation.

Solution to the problem if anyone else comes across the same symptoms on a machine: Replacing the RAM stick. The troubleshooting that I performed showed no indication that it might have been the ram. During post, testing the ram count showed nothing unusual (the test counts didn't "jump" numbers). And, I could boot into dos just fine. Weird.

Thanks again.