Trouble Installing Win95

Ok guys, I need help with some old school stuff. I didn't get into computers heavily until the days of WinMe and beyond (yeah, what a time to decide to jump in, huh?), so I'm just now going back to learn the Win9x stuff. Right now I'm trying to install Win95 on a spare computer I picked up and dang...This is definitely much more complicated than that super nice wizard XP provides huh? (Duh James.)

Anyway, I think I'm on the right track. I set up a Win95 boot disk and booted off it, formated C: to FAT, so that's all done. When it boots up, it identifies the CDROM driver, so that seems to be in place too. I can even reach the "D:\" prompt.

However, when I try to run D:\win95\, I get this:

Quote:

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Invalid media type reading drive D

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I've tried it with two different Win95 CDs.

Soi no what?

Man you got in.... Hmm, when I got my first computer Windows Melenium was out as well.

Anyway, I've installed Windows 95.... Twice maybe? You need to boot from the CD-ROM if you can, installing from a floppy is like having your dick stuck in a grinder.

Can you not boot from CD?

Go into BIOS and seeif it's selected. It's going to have a boot order like "C Drive, Flopp"... Try for putting CD drive first.

Yep, that's the first thing I did. It never even bothered trying to boot from CD, just went straight to booting from the HDD as if there was no CD in the drive. That's why I figured I'd have to use a boot floppy.

[edit] Also, it will boot from a WinXP, WinNT, or Lindows CD, as I tried those. I've tried several Win95 and Win98 CDs though, and it won't boot from any of those. [/edit]

www.Microsoft.com will walk you through it.

Be sure to install Duke nukem 3D too........ the days of dos.

CD:\ cd games
CD:\games\ cd dune
CD:\games\dune\ dune
CD:\ games\dune\dune\ duneII

Got to ask :

Genuine MS CD's ??
good condition, W95 and excellent is THE oxymoron for the day :)

Some are genuine, some are not, I've tried both original CDs and them some (legally ligit license keys included, mind you) burned CDs I got from Nihil. It won't work with either.

Quote:

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Invalid media type reading drive D

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Windows has been pretty good about "backward compatibility" but couldn't really do anything about "Forward Compatibility". Is the CDROM attempting to play a 33 1/3 vinyl at 78 RPM? Our CD players back then were only about 8X or so. Or were the copies a modern format that can't be read by an old CDRom?

Cheers

Oh great Knight of Angels, thou needest that which is known as a 'boot disk' containing dos 6.1 with system upon it. Thou wilt also require a driver for thine CD rom, and 'tis quite nice indeed to possess the 'format' and 'fdisk' programs upon't as well. Thy mayest also require a 'disk manager' program if thine harddrive is overlarge for thine Windows 95.

Fare thee well, Sir Knight, and may thine quest prove to fruition!

[Yeoldeedit]Thou shouldst prepare thee an autoexec.bat file to execute a config.sys file thou has prepared specially for the loading of said driver and disk manager into the system. From there, tis self explanatory indeed, for thou needest only to insert the most holy of holies, the Windows CD.[/Yeoldeedit]

Postscripte - Tis also handy to include a mouse driver upon thine boot disk, which can be executed from autoexec.bat.

Luck to thee!

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Originally posted here by AngelicKnight
Some are genuine, some are not, I've tried both original CDs and them some (legally ligit license keys included, mind you) burned CDs I got from Nihil.

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:rofl: Talk about dropping someone in the Poo!!


Its been along time since I had to do a 95 installation, have you tried running A:\setup from the boot floppy instead of D:\win95\?

Bleh, I'd rather do it from CD-ROM myself, Nokia. He was having trouble with the A: drive (correct?) anyways, so.. might need to adjust the BIOS settings and see if D: accessibility is all configured.


EDIT: Nevermind, sorry.. after re-reading the post it was the other way around. My fault.

Hang on guy's What version on Win95 are we discussing here? Did any one bother with the comments from |3lack|ce??

Bootable CD's as I recall only started with Win98... I am yet to encounter any 95's that were bootable.. even the OEM Ver.c

I have only ever run the Win95 install from a bootable floppy..WITH CD DRIVERS.. I have managed to run the install useing a Win98 boot floppy..

that out of the way

James have you tried a different CDROM drive?
IS the boot realy recognising the CDROM.. been caught in the past with config errors here.. see.. some of the older hardware was very fussy..
As I commented above.. Have you tried a Win98 Boot Floppy?
If the version of Win95 is earlier than Ver: C.. then I hope that your C: Partition is less than 2Gb. (I am sure it was V.c that was happy with Fat32 and partitions above 2Gb)

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Originally posted here by Spyder32
Bleh, I'd rather do it from CD-ROM myself, Nokia. He was having trouble with the A: drive (correct?) anyways, so.. might need to adjust the BIOS settings and see if D: accessibility is all configured.


EDIT: Nevermind, sorry.. after re-reading the post it was the other way around. My fault.

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LOL, you cant boot 95 from the CD spyder no matter how your BIOS is configured, as Undies has pointed out you have to do it from the floppy whether it be a 95 or a 98 one.

I'd be willing to bet that, even though it gives you a nice D:\> prompt,
it's just teasing you, and you can't read any cd in that drive. So, like others
have suggested, get someone to make you a win98 rescue floppy, because
it seems to have a very good ability to load the right driver, better than
the win95 install floppy.
:cool:

I've downloaded a ton of boot disks from Here. They have OEM's and just any boot disk you need to create.

cheers

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IS the boot realy recognising the CDROM.. been caught in the past with config errors here.. see.. some of the older hardware was very fussy..

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I think that's the problem, I don't think the boot is recognizing the CDDROM. I just found drivers for it, so I'm gonna try including that on the boot disk next.

The CD drive is a GoldStar CRD-8240B. The system is an old Pavilion 6330 (which was built for Win98).

You need to make sure that the boot FLOPPY has MSCDEX.EXE (Microsoft cd extensions) on it, if you are using a 95 startup disk. If you can get hold of a 98SE one even better as this willload the cd rom driver for you.(note SE)

If you only have a 95 one, you need to modify the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS for them to load a cd driver.

If you need to you can get a copy of mscdex from here: http://www.techadvice.com/tech/M/MSCDEX.htm

The exact modifications dependon the type and manufacturer of your CD-ROM.

It should look something like this:

CONFIG.SYS:
Files=25
Buffers=9,256
DEVICE=C:\PANCD.SYS /B:25 /N:PANCD001

AUTOEXEC.BAT
PATH=C:\;C:\DOS
MSCDEX.EXE /D:PANCD001 /L:D /M:100

Notice PANCD001 is the same in both, you have to make sure of this or it wont work.

In anut shell you need to have mscdex.exe to load your cd rom driver from dos or no matter what you will never get it to work!

//this site may explain it better than me! http://www.ameriwebs.net/groupworks/index.html

Nokia -- thus my edit. I didn't fully read the post and I didn't see what AngelicKnight was doing until I re-read it.

Ok, I found the driver. It downloads as an .exe program, then when you run the exe, it extracts all the driver files unto the disk. Unfortunately, I can't fit both the Win95 boot files and extracted CDROM driver files on the same boot disk, so what do I do?

If you can't fit everything on one floppy, use two floppies. One for the boot files and another for the drivers.

If you are realy stuck take out your HD and put it in another box as a slave.Now make a directory called CABS,now copy the whole 95 CD to this directory.Now put it back in its box and boot up.You should now (asuming that you have done the fdisk and format thing)boot to a C: now you type in cd\cabs.This should take you to the cabs dir that you made once here you type in setup and off you go.
My usual way to install 95 is to boot with a 98se CD then quit the 98 setup put in the 95 CD and then change to the relevant drive containing the 95 CD and type in setup at the prompt.
Hope this helps
Regards
Mike

AK - the inability to fit the windows sys files and drivers all on one floppy is precisely why I suggested in my first post to use DOS 6.1. You'll find by setting it up that way, it works quite nicely and fits into one floppy.

Two floppies is a pain - because you'll want to load the drivers in with config.sys and autoexec.bat, not manually. I'm not quite sure why this is the case, but experience tells me it is.

On my win95/98 install floppy I have:

Dos 6.1 system (command.com)
A homemade config.sys and autoexec.bat file which load in:
mouse
mscdex.exe
himem.sys

and make available the following utilities:
format, fdisk, chkdsk, scandisk (just in case and to double check yourself).
and my disk manager (for hdd's too large for win95 or 98 to recognize - allows multiple partitioning and helps winblows recognize it.) That disk manager, should you choose to use it, will be necessary to load onto the hdd after windows installs, and must be incorporated in config.win as well.

With these files and a good CD with key, you can install win95/98 on just about any ol' box you want to.


Luck to you!

[edit]BTW Nokia's spot-on with his solution as well - just taking a different route than mine to the same destination. Now that I think on it I load in atapi.sys, which would be the driver for most of the cd-roms I deal with - so you'd want to load in the driver he's suggesting in leiu of that...[/edit]

As someone mentioned earlier a win98 boot disk (The one that comes with win98) is perfect for these situations as it has a slew of generic CD drivers and such that auto load up. Also as noted by Undertake I think win95 CD's are 100% not bootable. If you can get your hands on a win98 boot disk make a copy and keep it in a very safe place :)

So Win98 boot disks work with Win95 CDs? Never knew that...

Yep, pretty much all the boot disk does it boot into a version of dos, runs the device drivers for the CD-ROM, and then goes to the D:\ and runs setup. In the 98 boot disk you have the option of booting into dos, or straight into setup. I generally go into dos first and run setup from the command prompt. I forget if the setup.exe is in the same spot in the directory tree in 95 as in 98, but this method will work.

"So Win98 boot disks work with Win95 CDs? Never knew that..."

Yep, a boot disk is a boot disk, Windows 98SE (note SE) boot disk has all the files neseccary to boot your computer and then load an OS, all it does is load system files and drivers to a "virtual drive" on your hard disk. Then when promted you type "setup" at the "A" prompt, this then hands over to the system files on your hard drive which then starts copying files from the CD-ROM by invoking the setup program. This can only be invoked by the system files after they are installed on a virtual drive, hence the CD not being bootable. If you had a XP CD in the drive and booted from a 98SE floppy it would just go ahead and install XP!

The only difference in a 95 boot disckand a Windows 98 SE boot disk is that there is more support for various CDROM's with a 98SE. 95 includes a very very limited CDROM driver by default and certainly does not include the MSCDEX.EXE file.

A 98SE boot disk is better than a 98 or a 95 one and the Windows 95 and 98 CD-ROMs are not bootable disks, they only started to be bootable with Windows 98 Second Edition (SE).

The easiest thing you can do is to download a 98SE boot disk, put your 95 CD in the CD drive, boot from the floppy, select install with CD ROM Support, then wait for everything to load up, and when you get the A:\ prompt all you have to do is type setup and it will do the rest for you!

GL