Installing Windows 95 on a old computer.

[Trent Steel]

Okay, I thought I would be able to do this with no explicit help but I am getting nowhere fast.
The goal is to have windows 95 running on this computer with any internet program, probably internet explorer 5.0. This will be used to allow my sister internet access without her having to use my office.
The hardware I am working with is a Compaq 833CDS machine, the specs are low, but I should be able it done.
What I ideally would like to do is to get it networked in windows 3.1 first and back up the harddrive, then I would like to wipe the harddrive and do a fresh install of windows 95.

The hardware is
Gainberry Pentium overdrive processor 133Mhz
486 compaq motherboard
16 MB ram
260 MB harddrive
2x cdrom
3.25 and 5.5 inch floppy drives
cirrus built in video
sb 16.
3com etherlink III 10Mbit isa nic
2400 baud modem
Some of the more interesting things about this thing, also the areas which are giving me the biggest problems. Both the CD and harddrive are SCSI devices, can't get access to the cd from any boot disk. Have no idea how to access the bios, can only hit F10 on startup to access the diagnostic partition that resides on the harddrive, this has all the system information. On the harddrive is a directory that holds cpqdos which holds compaq version of dos (along with the dos directory).
My attempts at completing this task first starting at trying to get windows 3.1 networked. I installed the nic and installed the drivers from the 3com website for dos, once I did this the connection light on the router lit up indicating that a connection was made. Next I tried turning on the network feature in windows setup, don't know which one to pick, many choices whenever I booted into windows it stated that the network device was not loaded and network functions would not work. Next I installed dos tcp/ip protocol driver that was able to log onto the router, ping the router but it said that it was not authenicated and some features were removed but when logging back into windows the warning about netware not running was gone. Coulden't connect from within windows, ran memmaker, now there is not enough base memory to activate the tcp/ip protocol. Now I am at a point where I am not getting anywhere, can't make a working boot disk with cd rom support, can't get network connectivity within windows, I am stuck. Any info on how I can get this to work would be helpful. This is mostly a pet project, but I would like to complete it.

[HAL9000]

Try this then. Instead of backing up to a different machine, create two directories. One for the Win95 CAB files, another for the backup files. Copy the CAB files to the hard drive, then copy all of the data you want to backup to the backup directory that you created. Once you're done, use the DELTREE command to delete everything and of course, answer "No" to deleting the Win95 CAB's directory and the backup directory. Now you have a "blank" hard drive. Switch to your Win95 CAB file directory and run the setup.

Also for booting with CD support, that Compaq probably supports booting from CD-Rom, use a Win98 or WinME CD as a bootdisk. You will receive an error once or twice durning the Win95 installation that the system cannot read from drive A:\, just ignore it as drive A:\ is the boot sector of the Win98 or WinME CD which is no longer in the drive.

[ktkendall]

Isn't he going to need SCSI drivers to get that CDrom recognized??

[homey]

486 with 16MB ram? Must be she is not your favorite sis.

I would throw the darn thing out and get her something abit spunkier. :)

[Trent Steel]

Update. Took HAL9000 advice and skipped trying to network windows 3.1 (should be windows 3.11 but when I got it service a few years back guess they loaded 3.1 and did not notice). Cleaned as much as possible off the disk, ie unneeded programs that I have the data disks for then backed it up to a backup directory C:\backup (you guessed it). Copied the cab files from the cd into an install directory C:\install. Deleted all other files and directories off the computer, as much as possible in windows then the rest in dos, yahhh dos commands. Ran the setup from the install directory, everything was going fine untill it hit 43% then boom "cannot extract *.cab file, setup will try to recover, hit any key to continue", tried that and no recovery, tried it again and apparently the copy from the cd to harddrive was no good, have to repeat. But no I have no way of accessing the cd, default 95 bootdisk no good, win98 bootdisk no good, and winme (from XP? weird) no good. Can't even boot from the harddrive anymore "invalid system disk, replace and hit any key to continue". Tried many, I repeat many boot disks that I could find on the internet, closest I got was Barts boot disk that supposedly was able to setup to scsi driver and set the cd to drive R but nothing could be read from it "abort,retry,fail". At this point getting very frustrated, spending all this time for something worth this little. I give up and try to reload from my backup disks (47), get to 46 and whoops the drives full, "reload from backup aborted", grrrr guess the backup, install and all the files that were present (at the time I created the backup) were too much for the drive not suprisingly. Now I need a new plan of attack, I must be able to get a boot disk to recognise that cd, I did it before (years ago, for various dos games) it should still be possible. Thinking there must to some useful information in that backup directory, hmmm ezscsi and scsi directory. In the ezscsi directory was able to execute the program ezscsi, it extracted some files to the C:\scsi directory (not the ones within the backup directory) and tried to modify the non-existant config.sys and autoexec.bat files on the C:\ drive, am using the windows 95 boot disk to boot. Hmmm copy the new files it created (autoexec.bat, config.sys into a new directory on the A:\ drive and checked them out on my main comp.

In the autoexec.bat file was this line
C:\SCSI\MSCDEX.EXE /D:ASPICD0 /M:12
and in the config.sys was these two lines
DEVICE=C:\SCSI\ASPI2DOS.SYS /D /Z
DEVICE=C:\SCSI\ASPICD.SYS /D:ASPICD0

Now I am getting somewhere. Copied the three files MSCDEX.EXE ASPI2DOS.SYS ASPICD.SYS into the win95 boot disk then added these modified lines into the autoexec.bat and config.sys files respectively. The lines were A:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:ASPICD0 /M:12

DEVICE=A:\ASPI2DOS.SYS /D /Z
DEVICE=A:\ASPICD.SYS /D:ASPICD0
corresponding to the files that I just copied to it, cleaned the partial config.sys and partial autoexec.bat from the boot disk.

Tried it, it works. Unbelievable joy comes rushing over me, whip out the disk and slide that write protect tab to on. Now that I have cd access I can recopy those cab/setup files. First have to clean off the harddrive, deltree command does not work, have to use del then rd commands on each directory that the failed reloading of the backup created occasionally having to switch to the A:\ drive to use the attrib -r -a -s -h command to actually be able to delete the files, took some time but I can always work on my typing skills. Now I have nearly a blank harddrive no way am I deleting that backup directory untill its being properly backed up on cd (now that I can access the cd it will actually do some good). Copy the cab/setup files from the cd to a new install directory. Ok lets run the setup, everything fine. get to 43% and just keeps on going all the way to 100% does some rebooting and now I have 95 on the comp with all devices detected, including the cd, nic. soundcard, everything. Win95 appears to be working just fine and actually keeps the date, before it kept on reverting to 1980 something, guess its not y2k compliant, but appears to be now.
All that I have left to do is to network it to my main comp to transfer files, printer access and internet access. Have got as far as getting the router to see the comp and its name but can't get the old comp access to the internet or either computer to see each other. I will have to read through the networking forum to get it connected, later. Learned a bit doing all this including that my cat is crazy, she was actually chewing on the cd tray when it was open, including the disk that was in it, no real damage done though, but why would a cd tray be so tempting? Oh well, I will update once its complete and I can kick my sis off my comp, well for basic stuff.

[Computer Hobbyist]

O' the joy of an all nighter. Get some sleep if you can. By the way, you realize that with 16 MB of Ram Sis is running right on the naked edge of Win 95. Be prepared for crashes if she tries to run any serious program.

As homey said, you might want to throw the damn thing out and buy something spunkier. I hear they have a $199 computer down at the WalMart website. :)

CH

[eshort]

what a coincidence..im trying to do exactly same procedure for two old notebooks...need a bit of help re:

I have two floppies: (l) is the driver setup disc for the external cdrom (Bakpak 8x), (2) is a win98 setup boot disc. Can sumone give me the commands and syntax for copying the bakpak files (which ones) to the win98 setup disc?

thanx much--then maybe ill also have that "setup works rapture" also :)

TX

PS- i know the ? prob belongs in another thread--but--it is sooo close to this situation!!

[RayH]

If you are going to load Windows 95, you'll probably have to install IE 4.0 before you install a higher version of IE. A lot of the OS features (like right click mouse), are found in IE 4. It was how MS declared IE to be part of the OS and not a stand alone program.

[RayH]

I don't know what the prices are like in Canada. But in my neighborhood I could probably get a whole computer system (less software) for about $275. I mean everything. It won't be the fastest thing on the market. But it'll work pretty good.