Need Help Copying Windows to Hard Drive

[fitzilee]

hey guys,

Maybe you guys can help me out with this one. I have got an old laptop that is not bootable from the cd-rom. The floppy and the cd-rom are interchangeble. I would like to install Windows 98se on it. My idea was to put the hard drive in my other newer laptop and copy the entire Windows 98se CD to the hard drive so that when I put the hard drive back into the older laptop I can just run setup from the hard drive. Is this possible? When I put in the boot disk what would be the commands to do this? I am not very familiar with older OS so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Mike

 

[pkme2]

I had a similar situation on my old Latitude LS, and I connected the Internal CD-ROM externally with a supplied cable connector.

This makes the O/S install a snap. If you don't have the cable, try googling it or check the Laptop's manufacturer's site.

Installing the O/S on another laptop will not work on your old lappy. The BIOS is different and the old laptop will not recognize anything. Cancel that idea.

 

[Wik]

I am not sure why you can't boot to your cdrom. Is the BIOS set to do so?


If that is true, then put the drive in your newer laptop. Format and sys the drive. Copy your win98 folder over. Put it in the old one and boot to the c drive. Run your setup. This would probably work the best.

Alternatly, you can install the whole thing using the other laptop, then move it over. pkme2 was incorrect about that. It will reload all your hardware when it boots up again.

 

[Nothinman]

Installing the O/S on another laptop will not work on your old lappy. The BIOS is different and the old laptop will not recognize anything. Cancel that idea.

The BIOS differences is irrelevant, Windows uses the BIOS for very little and all of the same information should be available in both systems. The kicker will be the IDE controller, but since Win98 is built on DOS it should fall back on slow INT13 BIOS access to the drives and still be able to boot so that you can install the drivers.

 

[duryodhan]

My friend had a similar problem. He installed Win98SE on another Laptop and then booted the HD on another Laptop and it worked totally fine.
By the way doesn't even the Floppy drive work?

 

[nweaver]

put HDD in computer
copy entire contents to folder called "disk" on the hard drive (this also means you have to format fat32 and partition prior to this)
put hdd back in laptop
boot Win98 startup disk
C:\disk\setup\setup.exe

 

[redbeard1]

This is my answer to a post asking a very similar question. In the post, someone responded that it worked for them.

>
On a working win98 system, go to the control panel> add/remove programs > startup disk tab, and make the start up disk. This makes a bootable floppy with cdrom drivers for dos. Then copy format.com, sys.com and edit.com from the command folder in windows, to the floppy. Look at the files on the floppy, find the file edb.sys and change the attributes to archive and system only, unchecking the read only and hidden boxes.

Now use this disk to boot the system. Use fdisk to set the drive up, reboot and at the a: type> format c: /s This will format it and get the system files on the drive. After this is done, from the a: prompt, type> copy *.* c:\ This will copy all the files to the hard drive. It is going to say that command.com already exists, and ask if it you want to overwrite it, say no. Now type c: then type> edit autoexec.bat, down a few lines is this entry: path=%RAMD%:\;a:\;%CDROM%:\ change the a:\ in this to c:\ Now use the alt and f keys, this will get you the menu, arrow down and choose save. Now use alt and f keys again and choose open, use the down arrow key and choose setramd.bat in this file is the line: a:\findramd change it to c:\findramd save this file and then press alt and f and choose exit. If I have this figured right, you could pull the internal floppy out, put the cdrom drive in, with the win98 cd in it, and boot the system from the hard drive. It would then run all the files needed to start the system with the cdrom.

Watch what letter the cdrom drive is given, usually it's e: From the c: prompt type the cdrom drive letter> e: then type> cd win98 this gets you to the folder where the setup files are. Type setup and hit enter and you should be on the way.

When windows reboots during the install, it's going to run these files again, just tell it from the menu, to boot without cdrom support, and it will continue to install windows. When you get done with the install, you need to either delete or rename the autoexec.bat so you can get rid of the cd boot menu.
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Old post

 

[fitzilee]

Thanks for the help guys! I figured I should report on how I dealt with this problem. I ran into a lot of error messages when transfering hard drives over. It worked but Windows was a little unstable. So I didn't do that. I figured out a solution before I saw redbeard1's post so I wasn't able to test that one, but it looks like it might work. I got a set of MS-DOS 6.22 floppies and installed them. I then got the cd-rom driver for this particular laptop, installed it and then ran Win98 setup. It worked flawlessly. The next person who has a problem let me know, I may be able to help!
tks
Mike