[..>Lost<..]

I have a friend that brought me her computer and it is an old p3 dell that i think had been upgraded in the past. Two cd roms one floppy, and one hd. when you boot it the dell screen comes up and then it asks for safe mode normal and which ever you pick it loads Windows me <----thats the problem!!! , and says it found new hardware then trys to go through that setup and after that it loads the desktop wall paper and you can get it to do nothing after that, no start button toolbar etc.. She had a boot disk but it was for windows 98 and she has the copy of 98 she wants to put on insted of me but anything I try will not get it to load the cd. what to do?????:mad:

[Jonesie]

If you bring the computer up in Safe Mode you should be able to naviagate around like you normally do with a few exceptions. My guess is that it is a virus that is keeping her from booting all the way up. You need to try to scan the drive for viruses in someway before you take other measures. If that dosen't work or if you can't get around in Safe Mode post back. Loading 98 is fairly complicated.

[..>Lost<..]

If you pick safe mode it will not load anything but the wallpaper also. she dose not care if all info is lost. How can i get around this issue so that I can install 98 from the actuall cd. Or if you say that can not happen I wouldnt know why, how can i fix this current problem. i can not scan the hd if I can not load anything. it says use scanreg to restoe but I have no startup disk and have searched all over. Found boot disks but no startup daisk files and I sure dont have a machine around with me on it!

[Jonesie]

First of all this may or may not work. If the Windows 98 CD is bootable, stick in the drive and boot it from the CD. When it prompts you on how you want to boot click on boot with CD support. When it gets done loading all of the stuff that it does change the directory to A. When you do this type in <debug> (without the <>). It will then look something like this:
-(Now type in the following)f 200 l1000 0 <enter> (without the <>)
-a cs:100 <enter>
-mov ax, 301 <enter>
-mov bx, 200 <enter>
-mov cx, 1 <enter>
-mov dx, 80 <enter>
-int 13 <enter>
-int 20 <enter>
-<enter>
-g <enter>
-q <enter>

After all that is done the harddrive is completly blank. You will now have to go through and make a partition on the drive, format, and copy all of the necessary files over. I think that you will also need a Windows 98 floppy, or at least that is how I do it. You may want to search on the web for a support page on how to do it because it is quite a process.

[beedubaya]

If you have a completely blank hard drive, if you boot setup from the Win98 CD, it will automatically partition it. Or, you can exit setup and use the fdisk program off of the Windows 98 CD. So many people use boot floppies when there's absolutely no reason to.

[..>Lost<..]

I have tried to boot from the cd and it will nit work, it will recognize a floppy in the A druive but i do not have a proper startup disk.

[CacheUK]

you can use Fdisk from the windows 98 boot disk -

Simply start the machine with the boot disk in then when it comes to A:\ type Fdisk and the Fdisk program should start, then select C:\ and format, after you have done this you should be able to boot the CD.

Another thing to look at is whether the CD is selectable to boot from in the BIOS. To do this enter the BIOS on startup then look around and there should be something saying what the pc looks for first when booting - it will probably start with Floppy then the HD, change it from floppy to CD and then enter the CD and restart, it should boot from the CD starting the win 98 installation. During the Win 98 installation it will give the option of using Fdisk - use it!!

[killians45]

It doesn't matter if its a 98 boot disk or not. Just exit out of it and run fdisk and remove the primary part, then recreate it then format it. Also, as stated you are NOT gong into safe mode since it is finding new hardware. I dont think its a virus, but more than likely a corrupt registry. It could also be that specific PIIX or other such MBD chipset drivers need be reinstalled.

[killians45]

another thing u can do and this is a bit more advanced, is changed the shell=explorer.exe in the system.ini to shell=progman.exe (i think you need .exe on the end...)

this will allow you to do some maitenance on it. If its a program that was installed and is stuck on the run once (doubt it but possible) just remove it from the following registry string:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce]

Dont remove anything else or it may screw the system up even worse. Once your done in there then go back into DOS and change the system.ini back to shell=explorer.exe