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| Thread ID: 30034 | 2003-02-09 02:23:00 | reinstalling windows95 | Term_X (560) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 119499 | 2003-02-09 04:56:00 | You either have a hardware problem or finger trouble, or a dose of both. You need to get back to diagnostic basics, playing with Win98 boot disk wont make any difference to your existing problems. You should only get one beep on booting. Go into cmos setup and auto detect hard drive, ensure LBA mode is on. else you wont get over 512 MB. It is possible that the wrong selection has previously been made. Preferably make a plain vanilla Win95 boot disk ie just the system files, FDISK, format, and anything else that may be useful. Dont bother with the full windows boot disk with ram drives cdrom drivers etc. You dont say what version of 95 you are trying to load, but 95A doesnt support fat32 only fat16. As Graham has said FDISK will delete all partitions IF the drive is ok, and there are no Linux partitions present. When you boot from the simple boot disk check the screen, pressing pause if neccessary to check that the drive is reported. When you run FDISK it will ask if you want to enable large disk support, say yes, this will enable fat32. Then delete existing allpartitions, then create one new primary dos partition. Reboot, then format c: /s This will transfer the system files to C: Reboot and check that the comp boots from the C: drive and gives a C: prompt. Then format c: /u to clean the drive again. Now you can use the full Windows boot disk with the cdrom drivers. It will pay you to make a directory c:win95 Copy all the files from the win95 directory on the CD to the win95 directory on the hard drive remove the CD and run the setup.exe from win95 on the hdd. If you cant do any of the above then the hdd or some other hardware is most likely stuffed. |
Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 119500 | 2003-02-09 05:43:00 | Just out of interest what does the /u on the format do? I looked in the WinXP 'DOS' but it doesn't have that option? |
-=JM=- (16) | ||
| 119501 | 2003-02-09 05:48:00 | The horizontal flashing cursor is an indication of either: 1. the first primary partition is not active, or 2. the master boot record is missing. |
Merlin (503) | ||
| 119502 | 2003-02-09 06:22:00 | Hi JM, the /u is an unconditional format, but on reflection I may be in a dos 6.22 time warp again :) | Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 119503 | 2003-02-09 06:31:00 | No, not in a time warp, the /u switch is not listed when you type format /? in dos 7, but it still works. If you format a floppy without the switch it says checking existing format, and it is possible to unformat the floppy. If the switch is used then the existing format info is not remembered, and it is not possible then to unformat. | Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 119504 | 2003-02-09 08:09:00 | I've decided I was in a dos 6 time warp after all. The /u switch is quite uneccessary, as all dos 7+ formats are unconditional. It is possible to unformat with Norton Utilities but not with the old dos unformat as a mirror file doesnt get written to allow that. Sorry if any confusion has been caused by a somewhat reflex action. | Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 119505 | 2003-02-09 08:58:00 | Cheers for that Terry, it's just I've seen the /u mentioned before and wondered what the heck it was as format has always worked for me. Then again earliest I've used properly is 9x. |
-=JM=- (16) | ||
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