Trouble Installing Win95

[|3lack|ce]

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]

[zENGER]

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

[AngelicKnight]

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

[zENGER]

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.

[Nokia]

"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