Installing OS in DOS

[mcottier]

Hi. I Had a problem installing my OS on my new computer, and I was hoping I could have some help. I have built everything correctly, installed bios correctly, and FDISKED + FORMATTED the hard drive. I insert the startup disk, start with cdrom support enabled, but when I try to install OS from cd, it says cannot run this in DOS. Well that's all I have is DOS right now, so how am I suppose to install it?

If it makes any difference, the startup disk I am using is from windows 98, and I am installing windows 2000 pro. Also, when I start the computer without the startup disk in, it try's to read hard drive and it says something like invalid disc, replace and retry. I know the hard drive works fine though because when I am running off of the startup disk, I can access the c: drive and copy and delete files from it.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Sincerely,

Michael Cottier

[bailey]

you must go into the bios and change the first boot device to the cdrom dive and then boot from the cd, it will then go through the install.
you cannot do it in dos mode

[EzyStvy]

From the A:\> Prompt, type: X:\I386\Winnt

X being the drive letter for the cd.

BUT, you really really need to get a copy of Smartdrv.exe for the floppy. The install will go much faster if you load smartdrv



"it says something like invalid disc"

This is because you didn't add really don't need to) Format C: /s


The /s switch copies some system files to the hard drive to make it bootable.

[edfair]

It sounds more like you have a hard drive problem. The startup disk you have creates a ram drive that shows up as C: if there is a problem on the hard drive. And you are able to delete stuff from it and copy stuff back and forth just like it was a hard drive.
You should get some screen information as it is booting telling you what is going on.

[HAL9000]

Do as bailey suggested... it's the easiest method and will allow you to partition and format painlessly as part of the setup proceedure.

[glc]

Windows 2000 is not intended to be installed from a bootdisk onto a partitioned and formatted drive. You boot from the CD and it takes care of all that for you. Disregard any instructions to the contrary, they are written for 95/98/ME.