Question, putting 98SE on floppies?

[Butterfly]

I bought a laptop, the hard drive is wiped. I want to install Windows 98SE on it. The CD ROM does not work, but the floppy does. I have the OS disk, how do I put it on floppies so I can install it on the laptop? I have another computer, I just need to know how I go about doing this!
And Thanks for any help I can get!

[edrod13]

I have never heard of someone succesfully using a floppy because the entire cab file folder is pretty big. Some of the particular cabs would exceed the capacity of the disk. What I would do and have done plenty of times with older laptops is to remove the drive and copy over the cab files. This will only work assuming that you have an laptop drive adapter to IDE. I have a small USB 2.0 enclosure made for laptop drives which i use to copy over the cab files. If you manage to slave the laptop drive to your desktop first reformat using FAT32 and then insert the windows 98 disk in the CDROM and copy over all the cab files in the WIN98 folder to C:\windows\options\cabs which is a folder you will have to create. Finally just re-insert the drive into laptop and use a boot up disk to use dos. Go over to c:\windows\options\cabs and then type in "setup" without the quotation marks. Sorry if it sounds confusing, as I am way better at doing it then describing it. HTH

oh, the install will want to install windows 98 to C:\windows.000 so just change it back to C:\windows. It will prompt you that data already exist and that it could be lost or something like that but just continue anyway.


Edrod13

[Force Flow]

Welcome to PCMech, Butterfly

What laptop is it, and is the CD drive internal or external?

[Butterfly]

The laptop is an HP, nice one except for the cd drive which is an internal. I do not have the equipment to comply with the first suggestion. I will check around and see if anyone I know does. I appreciate your suggestion though!

I remember way back when, that you could get 95 on floppies, so I thought maybe there was a way to put 98 on floppies.

Might need to find an external cd drive to plug in.

[alfie2]

Originally Posted by Butterfly The laptop is an HP, nice one except for the cd drive which is an internal. I do not have the equipment to comply with the first suggestion. I will check around and see if anyone I know does. I appreciate your suggestion though! I remember way back when, that you could get 95 on floppies, so I thought maybe there was a way to put 98 on floppies. Might need to find an external cd drive to plug in.

does it have a parallel port( printer port) or serial port(mouse ps2/dp-9)?

you can format the HDD with "system files" then copy/install transfer software. finally, use a "lap-link" cable/null-modem cable transfer all your win98 installation files from your desktop computer into a folder/directory in your laptop, then install from there.
remove the files after install to save space.

[edfair]

The 95 on floppies used a format that held around 1.6mb (DMF format) and required 27 floppies in the full version and expanded to roughly 62mb. All .cab files fit on the floppies as formatted.
98SE .cab files are mostly 1.8mb and are too large to go on floppies with any of the special formatting I've run across. And the entire thing is 127mb of install and roughly 450mb expanded.

One alternative is to transfer the install stuff, described somewhere here on the board, by temporarily moving the hard drive to another machine. Would require you to purchase a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter set. Once you have the install stuff on the hard drive you can install it from there. Also will eliminate the need for the CD when you start doing some upgrades to the system.

But you have a problem. Your laptop is going to need some drivers to make the full hardware work. With no CD to load hardware drivers you may not have more than basic VGA, no modem, no network, and no printer.

[Butterfly]

Thanks everyone for the info, I am going to take it to my brothers house tonight. We are going to try the transfer thing, using his computer. He thinks he has the stuff to connect the two. We will transfer off of the cd. I will let you know how it works. Might be easier just to replace the cd drive come to think of it! Oh well, it has been fun....I think!
Have a great week-end!

[edrod13]

If you do get the cab files transferred, you could always use a USB pen drive to copy over any drivers or programs that you might want to install assuming that the pen drive has the capacity.

[Force Flow]

Since the CD drive is internal, you should be able to boot from it.

Make sure you set the CD drive as a boot device before the HDD in the BIOS.

Or, some manufactured machines, if you press F12 at startup, you can choose which device to boot from.

[Butterfly]

Well, I went to my brothers house. My laptop now has Windows 95 on it. At least it has an operating system, for what it's worth. The CD DVD hardware is fine, it is missing a driver to activate it. It is a matter of getting the right drivers in there now for the CD and video display. This could take hours and days. I would need generic drivers as we could not find out what brand of CD DVD hardware it is. It is an HP Pavilion, if that tells anyone anything.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. We were unable to connect his computer to the laptop, he didn't have the right stuff to do it. Can you use a boot disk to load the drivers? As in, if I used a XP or Windows 2000 boot disk, they would have the correct drivers on them. Just a thought....I have another computer with XP on it, and my brother has 2000, so they are available to me.

[glc]

Even with Win95, you do not need drivers for optical drives - but you may need drivers for the IDE controllers.

Honestly, without a functional CD, the easiest way to install 98SE on a laptop is by removing the hard drive, putting it in a notebook to IDE adapter, installing it in a desktop computer, formatting the drive, and copying the cab files from the CD into a folder on it. You can then reinstall the drive, boot with a 98SE boot floppy, and run setup out of the cabs folder from the DOS prompt.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HD-108&cat=HDD

[edfair]

Have you tried to find the drivers on the HP site? There is good support there for some machines, and less than good support there for other machines. But they should be the one place where you could find them.
There have been some CDs that required additional support to get them to work but I would not expect HP to install one in their equipment.

[Butterfly]

Originally Posted by glc Even with Win95, you do not need drivers for optical drives - but you may need drivers for the IDE controllers. Honestly, without a functional CD, the easiest way to install 98SE on a laptop is by removing the hard drive, putting it in a notebook to IDE adapter, installing it in a desktop computer, formatting the drive, and copying the cab files from the CD into a folder on it. You can then reinstall the drive, boot with a 98SE boot floppy, and run setup out of the cabs folder from the DOS prompt. http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HD-108&cat=HDD

I know, I know...it's just kind of fun to do it the hard way! Thanks for the link, I bought it, I will do it the easy way. I would love to continue to do it the other way, I learn so much in the process. If I didn't work full time, I could spend days just screwing around on a system and loving every minute of it. Oh well, maybe in my next life!

[Butterfly]

Originally Posted by edfair Have you tried to find the drivers on the HP site? There is good support there for some machines, and less than good support there for other machines. But they should be the one place where you could find them. There have been some CDs that required additional support to get them to work but I would not expect HP to install one in their equipment.

Yes, I have been there...they need a better webmaster. Difficult site to find what you need on, you have to keep digging, someone here should apply for that job. I now have a number of floppies with drivers of different sorts from there, you never know, some day I might really need them! If not, I can reformat. That works..........I love this computer world! Wouldn't it be great if you could do this in the real world...if something doesn't work well, just reformat it!