HELP! Win95 has subdued WinXP on my computer!

[MidiGuy]

Ok, here's the deal. I have a printer that I want to install for a friend who has Win95. For testing purposes, I was setting up Win95 on my computer in a seperate partition from WinXP. I have four primary partitions on this drive - the first three are NTFS, and I formatted the last FAT before setting up Windows 95. I booted off of a disk, and when Win95 was done installing it rebooted. All it does now when starting up is show the Win95 splash screen, the it says "While Initializing device IOS: Windows Protection Error. You need to restart your computer." When I was booting off of the floppy, it said I was installing Windows on C:, but I figured it was just calling F: that because it couldn't read NTFS. The drive was empty, and the right size.

I just want to know if there's a way for me to fix the master boot record or whatever needs to be fixed so that I can start up in WinXP again. And getting Win95 working as a second OS wouldn't hurt either.

Thanks!

-Midi

 

[bacillus]

for starters, if you wanted to dual boot & use XP boot loader, your C partition needs to be fat32 & not Ntfs as regardless of win95 destination partition, some files are written to C.
also, it's best to install win95/98 first before XP to make life simple!
try booting from the XP cd & under the repair option try fixboot in order to recover XP.

 

[MidiGuy]

By the repair option, do you mean the Recovery Console? If so, the problem with that is that when I go into that, it asks me which installation I want to log on to, and the only option is E:\Windows, which is strange, since the two installations should be C:\Windows and F:\Windows (although Win95 thought it was also installing to C:\). And even if that is the correct installation, I don't remember the Administrator password! It's a pretty dumb thing, and I had been thinking about changing it, but I never did! I never use it, so I forgot it. Is that my only option besides reinstalling? At least I keep data and applications and seperate partitions, and I have backups even of the system state, so it shouldn't be too painfull.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Basie]

If you dual boot Win95 has to be installed first. Then reinstall WinXp. I would put them both on a Fat32
so you can access and share files between OS's. I never got the Recovery Console to recover or restore
my boot or mbr.

 

[MidiGuy]

I only wanted Win95 for one thing, really. I don't really care about sharing files between them. I do want WinXP on a NTFS partition. My question now is, since I figured out that my drive letters were changed when I installed Win95 (now, C:=E: (WinXP), D:=F:, E:=G:, F:=C: (Win95), R:=D: (CD-ROM)), when I reinstall WinXP, is it going to put anything on the soon to be reformatted Win95 partition, which is currently C:?

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Although I can not help you fix your MBR to get back into XP, I would like to make a suggestion for future use...If you were only going to set up Win95 to test out something and not really use it, you should have done so on a different hard drive to avoid the possibility of screwing up your current installation. AFAIK, win95 can only be set up on C: drive, meaning, if you had XP on C:..It is gone. You may have been able to get it to work right using a utility such as BootMagic, but I couldn't and wouldn't guarantee that. Good luck getting it worked out and if you can restore it, let us know how you did so. I do feel though that a full FDISK and format is coming though.

P.S. While Initializing device IOS: Windows Protection Error. You will get this in Win95 if you are using an AMD machine above K6-2/350. If you feel ambitious, you can get the k62update from AMD.com that resolves a timing issue with Win95 and AMD procs. I just went through this on my AMD XP 1600+ box when goofing around with win95.

 

[MidiGuy]

Well, the good news is that I'm now writting from the computer that I'm writting about now that I've done a reinstall of WinXP. The bad news is that my drive letters are still messed up and it won't let me change the drive letter of either C: (Win95) or E: (WinXP). However, it does give me the WinXP boot menu when I start up, and I have a choice between XP and 95. Because I want my configuation to be the way it used to be, I'll probably try to reformat just the Windows partitions, removing Win95 and reinstalling WinXP. I'm hoping that way I can leave my applications partition and my data partition intact, and then I hope that restoring the System State from a backup will make reinstalling software unnecessary. I'll post again to let you all know how that goes.

It looks like if Windows 95 would just start, I could at least do my testing before removing it, but I'm using an AthlonXP 1600+. How drastic is this update from AMD.com, and where exactly is it found?

And as a side note, my CD-ROM isn't actually what it assigned D: to. It made my second hard drive D:. I was going to use that drive for the test, but I don't have anywhere else to store my backups yet, and I was uncomfortable puting my only backups on the hard drive from which they came.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Wow, I can no longer find the patch from AMD...Its been a while and I have it on disk. I did however find it at MS here: K6-2 update It is a small file and should be put on a floppy disk. I had to set the FSB of my mobo down to 100 mhz(from 133) to get it slow enough to get into safe mode to install the patch (just double-click on the file ant it installs). Your mileage may vary and if I may suggest, If you want a second OS on there, the least I would personally go would be Win98. Win95 does not even support USB (except Win95C, and even that is shakey).

 

[MidiGuy]

Thanks! When I set my motherboard to 100MHz, is there anything else I need to think about, or can I just change that one setting?

Really, all I'm trying to do is test a printer under Win95 for a friend! He also has Win95, so that's what I need to test with. The reason I need to test it is that I tried to set it up there, and the software said it had to have Windows 98, but for some reason, I didn't try to add the Printer manualy and search for a driver on the CD. It's an Epson 480SXU, and it doesn't even have a power button! It looks and sounds like some other Epsons are much better. Oh well, it was only $20 after rebate. Anyway, I guess I just should have gone all the way out to his house to try that. It probably would have been easier than this!

Thanks for your help!

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Thanks! When I set my motherboard to 100MHz, is there anything else I need to think about, or can I just change that one setting? . No, unless you have RAM timings way fast (try CAS 2.5 or CAS3). You have the same proc as I do and "should be ok" after de-clocking to 1050MHZ. Doing this got me safe mode only, I could not boot into windows normal until after the patch. After installing the k6-2 update, while still in safe mode, I also installed Service pack 1 and some OLE update i also had on disk (you may not need those though). After that, I could start up normal and then load up hardware drivers, install IE 5.5(from CD), get on the 'net, and do Windows update from MS. Good luck. Remember though, If you want to dual-boot...Win9x/ME go on first, then install Win2k/XP.

 

[MidiGuy]

I changed my BIOS FSB setting to 100MHz, and I was able to load 95 even in normal mode (or should I say, "unsafe mode" ). After installing the update, I'm able to load it even at 133MHz FSB. I'm not really sure about memory timings, except that I haven't messed with them. I guess I'm ok though.

Although it's somewhat interesting and nostalgic, as soon as I'm done testing, Win95 is going bye-bye! But it's good to know how to dual boot with Win9x for future reference.

Now, you wouldn't happen to know how to get the USB ports working, would you? It says right on the Windows 95 CD "With USB Support", so it's at least revision B.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

If it has USB support, then it is Win95C..How well it supports USB devices I could not tell you. May not support much natively like Win98 on up, but if you have driver disk for the item you are going to install, then you might be in luck.

P.S. I am writing this from a Dell optiplex Pentium 200 MMX machine that I picked up on the cheap that I just installed Win95B on. I too was feeling nostalgic . Or maybe a sucker for punishment...lol