Can't Get Win95 to Re-Install

[StJoDennis]

I did it again! I have reformatted the hard drives on 3 or 4 systems now, so I should be able to do this...But I messed up again. Someday I'll learn to come to you guys first.

I made the Startup floppy. I have the Win95 CD. I reformatted the hard drive on the system. Now I can't get the system to boot the CD. I've tried most of the BIOS settings for the boot sequence, and the only one that works is to boot from A:. The floppy doesn't seem to have a command to start the CDROM to boot the installation disk. When I try to boot the CD, it says it can't.

HELP!!! please...

[pillainp]

Hiya,

As far as I can remember (it's been a lnng time), the only bootable Win95 CD's were the OSR 2B ones.

You don't need to boot from CD to do your install. Boot from the floppy and select "Start computer with CD-ROM support" or "Start Windows Setup from CD". That should get you going. If you do not have the second option above, let the system boot off the floppy with CD-ROM suport. Once you reach the A:\> prompt, simply type "X:\setup.exe" without the quotes to start the installation (X here should be replaced by the drive letter for your CD-ROM. You can find out which one it is by doing a dir command for each drive starting from C. The drive that contains a file called "Setup.exe" is the one you want.

Hope that helps.

Let us know the results.

NPP

[TEEB]

Did you format the hard drive did you remember to use the /s switch?

[StJoDennis]

Nope, I didn't use the /s.

I'm not getting the screen that says anything about "Start computer with CD-ROM support" or "Start Windows Setup from CD". Am I missing something here?

When I try to Dir the CDROM, I get "Invalid drive specification".

[TEEB]

Sorry I misunderstood you. Are you saying you can't get the computer to boot with a start up disk,or you have installed windows 95 and you can't boot?

[StJoDennis]

The system boots the Startup floppy in the A: drive, but I can't get past that point. To complicate things, the system has two hard drives, both empty. They are C: and D:, and are recognized when I do Dir's on them. The CDROM was originally E:, but now it doesn't respond to that designation or any other.

[TEEB]

I think I follow you now. First the CD that was E: drive will be F: drive to make room for the RamDrive.

If your disk is not recognizing your CDROM when you boot up you probably have the wrong disk. Try going here . Then download the Win95 B version to your hard drive. Then put a floppy in and click on your download and it will write the data to the floppy. Then try booting up using your new disk. Select "with CDROM support" and then place your Win 95 CD in the CDROM.

Type F: then at the F:\ type "setup" without the quotes.

HTH

[StJoDennis]

Thanks to all of you, especially TEEB. I followed your instructions on the last post and it worked! The only difference was that for some reason the CDROM is now the R: drive. I don't have a clue how that happened. As of now, things are progressing nicely. Thanks again.

[TEEB]

We are glad we could help Stjo Dennis!!!

[GaryRouth]

StJoDennis - should you ever need to know, the "R" drive is the default letter for cd drives on many bootdisks that use a Ramdisk for the disk & system utilities. They figure that "R" is a safe letter to use, since it's far enough down the alphabet! A brief note while the bootdisk is starting the system displays that your optical drive has been found and is now designated as the "R" drive, but that message goes by too fast sometimes to read.
. . . Gary

[StJoDennis]

Thanks again. DKC