Old computer with Win95...trash it?

[ninjazed]

My friend has an old 166 clone which developed some serious missing/corrupted file issues. I was going to reload the OS for him but I can't get the machine to recognize the CD drive. It will only boot into Safe Mode with no CD access. The Win95 startup floppy "for CD-ROM" doesn't have any drivers on it. It's been a while since I dealt with Win95 and I'm getting pretty frustrated trying to figure out how to get the CD drive up and running. I was originally trying to retain his original setup (it's an old clunker but his wife has alot of school work on it)but I'm staring to think that a repartition/format with a Win98 load is the only way left to go here. Anybody got any ideas. The CD reader is a Matshita CR-583....?

 

[FOBSIDE]

you should be able to use win98 boot disks to boot up and get the computer to recognize the cd drive. then from there you can load whatever OS you want through the cd rom. on a computer that slow i would go with linux.

 

[ninjazed]

Thanks for replying. I think I tried using a Win98 floppy for a similar problem a while back but it wouldn't take. Something about an incompatability issue if I remember right. Any other ideas?

 

[nekulturny]

you might try pulling the hard drive, setting it to slave, dropping into another box, then installing the os through the second box. That's how I got win2k onto the machine i currently use.

 

[monckywrench]

I use that method with a lot of the fossils I work on. The best way is to copy win95/98 to the drive in another machine, return it to the old box, and then run setup.

 

[K0rp5]

I say.. You should trash the HardDisk (as in.. Format it..) and install LINUX! RH7.0 is good.. and you can download it free... and burn it to a disk... if you want.. it is only a suggestion... **Looks at you oddly** But no.. you like my suggestion.. you will do just this... You will... mwahahhahaha

 

[IsOs]

Sounds like your CD has a proprietary interface card/connection. If it's connected to the soundcard, you might need to load the dos driver for the CD first. I had an old Sony CD drive connected to a soundcard that required the DOS driver first before it can be recognized by Windows 98.

 

[Enigma]

Why not download a dos cd rom driver and load after you boot to dos with win95 disk or better yet add it to your boot disk.

 

[paulip88]

I would have to say it would that you should try to hook up the drive to another system to save some of the files on it. While you're at it, you might as well try to install an OS as suggested before.

Win9x should be able to run OK on it.