How can I install win 95 on this old laptop? edit ((Need more help please))

[nx02nx02]

Hi there.

I need some help.
I just got an old laptop, really old it's a jetbook with a 486 and it only has a floppy drive in it. No cdrom.
Well the floppy drive doesn't work so I cant see any way to get an OS on it.
I just wanted to put Windows 95 on it for now. I have Win 95 on floppy disks.

There has got to be some cheap easy way to just get windows 95 on this laptop.
I cant spend too much money on it becuase the laptop is probably only worth $30 or so.

Is there any way I can hook it to my desktop and install from there somehow?
Or is there someway I could hook my desktop floppy up to the laptop? (a converter)?

I seen a external floppy that hooks through the printer port but that was like $100 LOL.

The laptop has:
A Printer Port:
PCMCIA Slot:
VGA:
Com1:
Expansion Bus:

 

[Budman]

Just get an IDE adapter and connect the hd to your desktop,then copy the needed files to setup win95 & then return the hd to laptop & install win9X

 

[nx02nx02]

Sounds good to me. Where can I get that adaptor?

So this is an adaptor that will make a laptop hard drive work in my desktop?

If so that would be sweet.

 

[LTC8K6]

Here's one although it comes with rails you probably don't need. Any decent computer supply place should have these adapters.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Budman
Just get an IDE adapter and connect the hd to your desktop,then copy the needed files to setup win95 & then return the hd to laptop & install win9X

How is he supposed to get the laptop hard disk to boot once he's copied the Setup files over?

 

[nx02nx02]

Originally posted by: Dopefiend

Originally posted by: Budman
Just get an IDE adapter and connect the hd to your desktop,then copy the needed files to setup win95 & then return the hd to laptop & install win9X

How is he supposed to get the laptop hard disk to boot once he's copied the Setup files over?

Ok I found one at a local store and im about to go get it.

But how do I do this?

 

[Budman]

Isnt the hd bootable right now?

if not you can just format it before copying files and make it bootable from windows.Or you can just boot from a bootable floppy then go to c: and start the setup from hd.

if you need a bootable floppy you can get one here http://www.bootdisk.com/

 

[nx02nx02]

ok i will give it a try here in a hour or two.

I will post back the results.

Thanks for the help.

 

[nx02nx02]

Ok I got the part and tried it but my desktop is not reading the laptop hard drive. The BIOS does not detect it.
I actually tried this on 2 computers as well. One is a MSI K7N2 Nforce 2 motherboard. The other desktop is a older MSI board. On both of my computers during bootup id doesnt detect the hard drive and the bios doesnt see it either.

The hard drive is spinning though. I know that for sure I can hear it.

Any ideas?

 

[Gunbuster]

You put the adapter on the right way? the cheap ones are not keyed and labeled badly.

 

[nx02nx02]

I have tried it both ways now.

Same with both ways.

I just tried installing win 95 just barely and got a error that says.

Microsoft windows 95 setup

Setup cannot install windows 95 on your computer

your computer does not have a hard disk, your hard disk is not functioning correctly or your hard disk requires a special device driver contact your computer vender for assistance.

heres the adaptor i bought.

http://www.compusa.com/product...=294956&pfp=BROWSE

 

[DaveSimmons]

Are you connecting the drive, by itself, using your first IDE cable?

You might also need to adjust your BIOS settings to get DOS to see the drive if your motherboard has SATA support and the drive controller setting isn't legacy / compatibility -- your motherboard manual should explain this.

Remember not to install any drivers for your desktop (chipset, video, sound, network etc.) since your laptop has different hardware. You'll need to try finding the right drivers and burning a CD-R (drive might not read CD-RW).

 

[nx02nx02]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Are you connecting the drive, by itself, using your first IDE cable?

.

Yup.

And there is no SATA on either comp.


I will go check the BIOS right now.

 

[nx02nx02]

Also heres some info on the hard drive.

Maxtor:
Model: 25128A
HDA: 04P1
PCBA: 21P1
UNIQUE: 01P1
MFG. DATE: 04-30-93
MADE IN: Singapore
EA: NA

 

[Gunbuster]

So far you have spent $7.99 on a laptop worth about $5, time to cut your losses dude.

 

[nx02nx02]

Yeah LOL guess so.

 

[Arcanedeath]

you may have damaged you laptop drive by putting on the converter the wrong way it can fry your drive if it's put on backwards, I recently got one of these converters (although from startech.com) and it worked fine so it's possible you have a dead laptop HDD, but in any event you need to boot off a win98 or 95 setup disk and have your HDD on an IDE cable by itself as the master and make sure the molex connector is pluged into the converter and your laptop drive is jumpered correctly. Once all that is done you need to run FDisk and then format your drive so it's bootable in dos. Once that is done copy the Win95 CD to the hard drive and put it back in the laptop, it should boot to dos and you run setup from where you stored the win95CD.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: nx02nx02
I have tried it both ways now.
Same with both ways.

That, actually, could be a bad thing. There are some HDs that, unlike floppies, do NOT like to have the IDE cable reversed, and can actually damage the drive. Some Maxtor UDMA IDE HDs have been known to have that issue. I have no idea if that also extends to their laptop drive line or not.

Here's a question - is there a significant delay at bootup, even if the BIOS doesn't identify the drive? In other words, is it attempting to detected the HDs, and timing out, finding nothing, or does it fail immediately?

Some laptop HDs, have master/slave jumpers just like normal desktop IDE HDs. When I used one of those adaptor caddies, I had to constantly swap the jumper around.

One other thought - as long as there isn't a long timeout (around 30 seconds) during BIOS boot when detecting the HDs, then it's possible that it is being detected, but something else is going wrong. I don't know if the "PowerMax" utility works for laptop HDs too, but mfg diag boot disks can sometimes detect HDs that the BIOS cannot properly ID. You might try downloading that from Maxtor, and see if it reports *any* sort of HD connected, or gives info about cabling errors.

I have an old Toshiba T-something laptop, 486sx-20, 6-bit greyscale display, 8MB RAM - basically slow as junk. Put Win95 (gold) on there via the floppy drive. Works ok as a cheap laptop that you don't care if it gets destroyed/stolen, and as a Remote Desktop terminal for my main machine running XP, although it's still a bit slow with decrypting the RDP stream, I'm still searching for a way to disable the encryption layer completely, purely for performance reasons.

I had an IBM 701C 486-75 before that, 640x480 color screen, no floppy even, that worked great as an RDP/NetMeeting remote terminal. The hinge snapped, and some time after that, the LCD panel's HV supply fried and took the panel out with it.

Considering the vintage of the laptop, I know that you probably don't want to spend any more than you have to, but I'm sure that you could pick up a smaller-size (under 2GB) HD for it at a computer show for under $10 or so.

 

[nx02nx02]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: nx02nx02
I have tried it both ways now.
Same with both ways.

That, actually, could be a bad thing. There are some HDs that, unlike floppies, do NOT like to have the IDE cable reversed, and can actually damage the drive. Some Maxtor UDMA IDE HDs have been known to have that issue. I have no idea if that also extends to their laptop drive line or not.

Here's a question - is there a significant delay at bootup, even if the BIOS doesn't identify the drive? In other words, is it attempting to detected the HDs, and timing out, finding nothing, or does it fail immediately?

Some laptop HDs, have master/slave jumpers just like normal desktop IDE HDs. When I used one of those adaptor caddies, I had to constantly swap the jumper around.

One other thought - as long as there isn't a long timeout (around 30 seconds) during BIOS boot when detecting the HDs, then it's possible that it is being detected, but something else is going wrong. I don't know if the "PowerMax" utility works for laptop HDs too, but mfg diag boot disks can sometimes detect HDs that the BIOS cannot properly ID. You might try downloading that from Maxtor, and see if it reports *any* sort of HD connected, or gives info about cabling errors.

I have an old Toshiba T-something laptop, 486sx-20, 6-bit greyscale display, 8MB RAM - basically slow as junk. Put Win95 (gold) on there via the floppy drive. Works ok as a cheap laptop that you don't care if it gets destroyed/stolen, and as a Remote Desktop terminal for my main machine running XP, although it's still a bit slow with decrypting the RDP stream, I'm still searching for a way to disable the encryption layer completely, purely for performance reasons.

I had an IBM 701C 486-75 before that, 640x480 color screen, no floppy even, that worked great as an RDP/NetMeeting remote terminal. The hinge snapped, and some time after that, the LCD panel's HV supply fried and took the panel out with it.

Considering the vintage of the laptop, I know that you probably don't want to spend any more than you have to, but I'm sure that you could pick up a smaller-size (under 2GB) HD for it at a computer show for under $10 or so.

It does take a while trying to detect it. Maybe a minute or so or maybe a little less.
Oh well I will just grab another cheap laptop drive like you suggested.
I dont think I fried the drive becuase I just checked and I connected it correctly the first time and then incorrectly the 2nd. the hard drive only spins when its connected 1 way.
And it does the same thing the whole time.

 

[Philippine Mango]

I have a laptop HDD adapter for desktop computers. Tried it both ways and it didn't fry the drive... When your first figuring it out besure to remove all devices from that channel. Laptop HDDs aren't used to being on a cable with multiple drives (1 drive per channel). The drive will default to master and should work, so it should be=

Lappy HDD on Channel 1
optical drive on channel 2

and if things go well then its working fine.

Then if you HAVE TO, do=

Desktop HDD on channel 1 (Master)
Optical Drive on channel 1 (Slave)

Lappy HDD on Channel 2

Good luck!

 

[nx02nx02]

Im trying to use Powermax right now but the powermax that I downloaded said that it would work on hard drives 500 MB or bigger this one is smaller. is there an older version of powermax that anyone knows of?
Or one for small drives?

 

[nx02nx02]

Ok I got powermax to detect the drive.

Powermax detects and identifies it and gives me all the info on it cylanders, etc.
also it gives me these options:

Install confirmation
basic quick 90 sec test
advanced test
burn in test
low level format
select another drive
contact maxtor

So yeah this floppy disk can detect the drive but my computer and the bios still cant so what do I do now?
Powermax detected it but how do I make my computer detect it?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: nx02nx02
Ok I got powermax to detect the drive.
Powermax detects and identifies it and gives me all the info on it cylanders, etc.
So yeah this floppy disk can detect the drive but my computer and the bios still cant so what do I do now?
Powermax detected it but how do I make my computer detect it?

Ok. So what you have now, you have the laptop HD, hooked up via the adaptor to the desktop machine, and using the PowerMax boot floppy in the desktop, you were able to get the laptop HD detected - right?
That's good news, that means that the drive isn't fried.

Now, when you said that it took a long time during the HD detection, did you mean when the laptop HD was installed into the laptop? Because that would seem to indicate some sort of master/slave jumper problem.

While you have the laptop drive hooked up to the desktop and running PowerMax, it wouldn't hurt to do a surface scan to check the disk too. I would write down the various cyl/head/sector parameters of the drive. There might be a way to enter those into the BIOS on the laptop, to allow it to detect the HD, but the master/slave jumpers have to be set properly first too.

 

[Shawn]

Here's what you do. Keep your regular hard drive hooked up and run this one as slave. Boot into windows and copy the 95 cd onto the hard drive. Put it in a folder such as Win95cd or something. Then boot the laptop with that hard drive and run C:\Win95cd\setup.exe.