ARE YOU FORGETTING SOMETHING?

[deerslayer]

My brother asked me to install windows on his old computer after his wife formatted the hard drive and couldn't figure out how to put windows on (this would be the second time she did this). So i figured no big deal, she just don't have the boot disk. I go up there, put in the boot disc and windows 95 cd (this is an old gateway 120 mhz) and it wont read from the CD-ROM and when you type in D: it says "invalid drive specification". The only drives i can access are A: and C:, so i put in the origional gateway boot disk, and then i put in the sytstem resource CD and it wanted to install the CD-ROM drivers, so i figured that would solve it, WRONG, it doesn't find the files it needs. Tried again, says "wrong dos version" so the system CD has an option to install dos, i try to do it, and it pops up and says "ARE YOU FORGETTING SOMETHING" and it wants me to put the freaking system cd in, well guess what, it's in there. I am looking for suggestions on how i can get around this problem. I've thought about these options, let me know what you would do in this situation:

1. Put a dif CD-ROM in
2. Install Windows 95 off of floppies (i have a windows version on floppy disks, really old, legit)
3. Take the hard drive out and put windows on it in a different computer
4. Try to find dos on the net and put it on a floppy (not sure this is possible)
5. Ask you guys and pray someone has a good answer

What do u guys think? Ever heard of this or know what to do? He just wants windows on it so his kids can play their old dos based games that wont install on XP. Any help appreciated

 

[AGodspeed]

If you're trying to upgrade from Win95 to WinXP, it won't work. MS decided not to support people who want to upgrade from Win95 to XP for some reason....

 

[ojai00]

<< "ARE YOU FORGETTING SOMETHING" >>



LOL!!! I've never seen that before. Have you tried Windows 98 with the 98 boot disk? That might be a better solution for you than 95 or XP. Hope this helps.

 

[deerslayer]

im not trying to upgrade, i'm trying to do a clean install of windows 95, i didn't try the windows 98 boot disk because i didn't have one with me. I put windows 98 on it the last time they wanted it fixed, because they had a virus, so i fixed it and then my bros wife complained it was too slow, duh, it's 120 mhz, not 1200. So she formats it, and leaves it for me to fix, they want 95 on there, i'm lost on what to do, i could not get past that annoying little "ARE YOU FORGETTING SOMETHING" message, i did have to laugh at it though. lol

 

[Bleep]

I replied earlier but somehow the post dissapeared.
You will need to put a dos cdrom driver on the hard drive. Get a windows 98 boot disk and boot with that, put in your win 95 CD when the boot disk completes select start computer with cd rom support, this will set up a ram drive and your cd will be drive E. After booting change directories to E and from there type in setup.exe.
Bleep

 

[deerslayer]

i'll try that....i had a windows 95 boot disk. i could get to the part where it would put dos on, but it will not read info off of the CD's, i guess that's my concern, my brother lives half an hour away, and it's hard to use trial and error unless i bring all my stuff up there, hopefully the windows 98 boot disk works....thanks for the reply guys

 

[erub]

Windows 95 boot disks, as I remember - DO NOT have CDROM drivers. That was one thing that was a great advantage going from 95 to 98, the 98 bootdisk had built in generic cdrom drivers. So use a 98 bootdisk.

 

[PH0ENIX]

Well, Im a tad confused as to where exactly its falling over - I cant make out from your post whether you can actually access the CDROM or not.

Essentially, do this.

Get This
Make the diskette,
Boot to a dos prompt, and sys the HDD so it's bootable.
insert the diskette you just made, and type 'install' without the quotes.

This should install support for the cdrom drive, you can then reboot,
insert your OEM win95 cd, and run setup.

You may have to manually copy mscdex.exe from the diskette.

Best of luck!

EDIT: Fixed link - this should work better

 

[joohang]

<< If you're trying to upgrade from Win95 to WinXP, it won't work. MS decided not to support people who want to upgrade from Win95 to XP for some reason.... >>


Where did you get the idea of WinXP? He's talking about P120.

 

[bluemax]

There is the very distinct possibility that the generic IDE CD-ROM drivers *will not work* with his CD-ROM drive (considering its age.)
You will need the DOS driver for your SPECIFIC model/mfr of CDROM.

Try getting DOS working instead of even going to Win95, unless you simply don't have any DOS disks at all.....
If you have no choice, a Win98 boot disk with the proper DOS CD-ROM drivers should work fine.
If it's DOS games you want to play, why not just load DOS? Teach your kids to type.

 

[deerslayer]

they aren't my kids and it's not my computer to decide. i tried to install dos, but it wont read the cd and i don't have any dos disks that i could use instead. i think i'll probably do the Win98 bootdisk and if that don't work i'll put a different CD Rom in and try that.

 

[bluemax]

<< i tried to install dos, but it wont read the cd >>


Sounds like I was right - take a look inside to find the MFR and model of CD-ROM, and get the specific DOS drivers for it. That'll do the trick. Once DOS can recognize the CD-ROM, you're set for any OS you want, from DOS to XP.