messed up somethin big time, any ideas?

[darkside]

hi, i got my hands on an OLD pc (like 10 years) and the idea was just to mess about on the net and play some music with it. so first challeng is getting it online.
i got a wireless PCI card for it, installed the drivers, thenm installed the card then windows tryed to do its thing and tbh it messed up :/

its 98 that appears to have been installed over 95 tho im not 100% sure. this would be all fine and dandy if i had the install disk but i dont, during windows trying to install the hardware there are a load of files missing so ive been trawling the net looking for them and i did mangae to get my hands on most but there are a few that are no where to be seen.

i would just get the files off the cd-rom like it asks me to but i dont have it (the person whose computer it was shipped it off to pc world or whereever and it came back with a different OS and no OS cd :/

there are some of the files in a cab on the computer some i had to transfer myself from the net using a floppy and some i cant get.

anyone got anyideas? if you need more info ask meh
Nathan

P.S if nothing can fix it without getting a new 98 cd+key what linux distros would suit an OOOOLLLLLDDD computer i think the HD is about 1.19 or somehting like that and its got 80mb of ram i only want to be able to use firefox and play music over the LAN

[DougL]

You could try holding the Ctrl key or F8 key prior to loading windows, this should bring up a dos list choose command prompt. At the prompt type scanreg /restore this will allow you to restore a copy of the registry prior to you loading the drivers.

Doug

[darkside]

its not the registry thats broken (i think) when they installed 98 over 95 i think they chose to install some of it but not others, networking drivers mainly.

if i got a copy of 98 would i be able to use that to get the files i need or would i need a new disc + key?

cheers for the reply
nathan

[edfair]

When 98 uploads drivers from the CD it doesn't require the key. So yes, you probably could get the required files from it.
If the registry is intact you could recover the key from it. If you are going to do any modifications you probably need it. And if you are going to borrow somebody else's CD to get the drivers why not put the install stuff on the hard drive so you don't need to borrow it again?

[darkside]

VERY small HD, i think i would get the os the disc and that would be it lol

how much data is stored on the disk? is it like 700mb or is it same as OS?

[glc]

Win98SE cab files needs about 150mb. That's all the files in the \win9x folder on the CD without the subfolders, that's all you need. 98 original is about 120mb.