i just installed win 95 on a gateway solo 2500 and when it restarts i get the message that "this version of windows runs only on ms dos 8.00" and it then gives the c prompt. what should i do to resolve this issue
Answer one more question for me...do you have info on that hard drive you need to save?
If not, you can format the drive and install Win95. Boot disks can be found at (read the instructions) and additional help making a disk to boot and get your cd-rom working at:
Run Fdisk and delete the partitions and create new......
delete partitions in this order;
1.Non Dos (if you have one Stop, and don't delete, Post back)
2.Logical Dos Drives
3.Extended Dos
4.Primary
Create Primary, set it active, reboot....Format
(Hopefully Scandisk will have run before format..post back)
TT4U
Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions. Backup All Important Data/Docs..All involved shall be spared the grief.
Did you run Scandisk and choose YES to do a surface scanso it'll do a surface scan and hopefully mark the bad sectors as bad?
boot from floppy startup disc and run it
Did "verifying drive integrity" follow thru with fdisk?
last resort;
Use a boot floppy to get to A: then switch to C: and type Fdisk /mbr
or
Only one thing left to do...Open it up and find the drive manu. and model#, and Go to the HDD manu. site and d/l the drive checking utility(LLF)
here's gateway's vendor links,
Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions. Backup All Important Data/Docs..All involved shall be spared the grief.
yea its a laptop. now when i go to run scandisk it says that c drive cannot be found and that my cd drivers cant be found either. how can can i just get rid of everything and ten start from scratch
Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions. Backup All Important Data/Docs..All involved shall be spared the grief.
You gotta follow techtippy's lead here. He ask you earlier to identify all partitions and stop any fdisk activity if you found a non dos partition. He wants the info that is still likely on your c drive to remain there until we rosolve this problem. I lost a bios chip last night on my machine and will be changing a motherboard until I can either get a basic reflashed or borrow another to start from and do a hotswap to flash my original. I will be up and running again without loss of data because of forums like this. Ya gotta listen and try good advice especially, when you are cautioned not to go too far.
Take a deep breath, ask more ?'s and do more research. If you do anything rash, you may make the repair beyond the scope or this, or any other forum.
Try to change the Boot order in BIOS to "CD ROM" as first boot device...Put in the OEM CD and reboot...hopefully you'll end up at an A:\ prompt (My 98 OEM does this)or even C:\ or D:\....if so, type Fdisk /status
If it boots, try also to switch drive letters, (from A:\ to C:\.....from C:\ to D:\, etc) post back with info
You'll need to boot from CD --or-- floppy to run Scandisk...
with a startup floppy definitely, and possibly with 95 OEM CD, you should be able to utilize the tools
If no go
Go to another PC and create Startup floppy in Control Panel>Add\Remove Programs>Startup Disc Tab...
read the READ1st file (print if possible)
Use a Brand New floppy to copy the contents of the D/loaded file to, after you've d/l to anywhere convenient on other PC
and opened it.
About how old is laptop????? (important to boot from CD)
Is the OEM CD 95A, 95B(OSR2), 95C..?????
I understand how frustrating this can be,...the more details in answers to quest's the better
TT4U
Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions. Backup All Important Data/Docs..All involved shall be spared the grief.
Not for one cluster...the manu. LLF utility will mark the bad sectors appropriately and won't use them (is that you hombner, under new name?)
TT4U
Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions. Backup All Important Data/Docs..All involved shall be spared the grief.
Correction to myself;
The manu. LLF will mark the areas on disk that were bad at the time of manu. (every new HDD has some bad sectors), and when it's LLF-ed, these sectors are marked unreadable and the (High-level) Format command avoids allocating these areas as usable.....
It is very possible for the HDD to become completely unusable and should be tossed, or used as a door stop...
(the Format command determines too many bad sectors) and
the LLF utility should help determine this also, along with other drive checking utilities, either from manu. of HDD or third-party,.......however the LLF "must" be done with free manu. utility (unless ofcourse you've got big bucks to spend on a Universal Third party LLF program, which contains most major manu. codes)
Another consideration is if the disc is to be used for critical data apps
TT4U
Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions. Backup All Important Data/Docs..All involved shall be spared the grief.
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