Reinstalling Windows 95 on OOOLLD computer

[leapingfrog0]

Hey Guys,

I'm trying to reinstall Win95 on an ooold computer (made probably in 1994) for an older couple in town. This computer was running great until the BIOS suddenly started asking for a password to bootup (for whatever reason). I got that fixed by clearing the CMOS, but then Win95 kept freezing on the bootup screen!

I thought I might as well format the hard drive and reinstall Windows 95 to fix the bootup problem. The computer has been in use awhile, and so I thought it could use a nice clean format.

I got the hard drive formatted, but now I'm in a bit of a dilemma. The CD-ROM drive is connected to an ISA board in the system. The motherboard only has one integrated IDE channel for the hard drive, and the other channel is on this ISA board. Everytime I boot the system with a Windows 98 Boot Disk (Floppy) to try and get the Win95 setup running, it does not install any CD-ROM support/drivers because it does not detect any CD-ROM devices in my system! I'm assuming it's because the CD-ROM drive isn't plugged directly into the motherboard?

Ahh, what do I do? How can I get DOS to recognize my CD-ROM drive and get some drivers in for it? I can't get the setup running otherwise!

I'm *assuming* the system was originally installed with Windows 3.11 (with floppy disks), and then later upgraded to Windows 95. Is this my only option to get things up and running again? Install Windows 3.11 first (which I don't have), and then Windows 95? Is there anything else I can try?

Thanks for any help.

Andrew

 

[Dahak]

You can probably do 1 of few things that I can think of off the top of my head...
1) slave the cdrom to hard drive and use the win98 boot disk to see if it come up.
2) or you may have to find old dos/win 3.1 drivers for either the cdrom or isa controller card
3) grab a newer cdrom and hook it up temporarly till you copy over the install files or do the windows install

Dahak

 

[redbeard1]

This was a very handy program in it's day. It could find virtually any ide cdrom, and some of the controller based cdrom's. It makes a bootable floppy disk and then you choose a number to see if finds a drive. It works best to copy the win95 cab files to the hard rive and run the install from that. Otherwise you can run the install from the cdrom also.

cdromgod

 

[Derango]

Originally posted by: redbeard1
It works best to copy the win95 cab files to the hard rive and run the install from that.

That also has the nice side effect of having windows not ask you for the windows cd every time you install a driver 😉

 

[farscape]

A lot of older systems connected their CDROMs directly to the sound card. Not too many people installed from CD - everything was floppy. 95 came in both flavors, though you didn't get too much in driver support or 'extras' on the floppy version. Your prolly going to have to do a boot disk with 'mscdex' ( think that's it) and dos drivers for the drive.

 

[mastertech01]

I may be totally wrong with this, but I was under the impression you can install win95 with a win98 boot disk. The 98 boot disk would have a great deal more dos driver support.

 

[Submit]

As a last resoft. Pull out the old hard drive and connect it to another pc. Partition and format the drive. Create a directory and copy the installation files into it. Boot from floppy and "cd" into the installation directory and run setup. It *should* work.

 

[CryHavoc]

ah, you newbies are too funny.
Let me go way back before the days of the bios supported self booting cdrom.

If you have access to the Windows 95 boot floppy disk, then you will be ok, but if not, then you will need to modify the config.sys and autoexec.bat file to load the atapi drivers. Of course, you need an atapi cdrom drive driver disk. If you don't have one, search the internet, or run over to a local computer store. I am sure they have tons of them on floppy. There was a time when drivers came of floppy's and not CD's believe it or not.

This is a sample config.sys and autoexec.bat to load the cdrom driver and the mscdex driver

config.sys:

files=30
buffers=30
device=c:\dos\mtmcdai.sys /d:cd01


autoexec.bat

c:\dos\mscdex.exe /d:cd01


now for an explanation of what's what for those that don't know.

In the config.sys file, the device driver loads the mtmcdai.sys which is what Mitsumi uses as their driver. Other drives use atapi.sys. Whatever you have, you should be able to use it, or go search the internet for the atapi.sys driver. Its a standard generic atapi cdrom driver. The /D: part is the cdrom name to which you can call it whatever. I use cd01 as a standard. But remember its important to use the same name in the autoexec file.

mscdex.exe /d:cd01 - Note the /d:cd01 is the same as whats in the config sys device driver line of device=c:\dos\mtmcdai.sys /d:cd01

hope this helps.

 

[asb002]

Well Spoken CryHavoc. Although they may be having problems because the "default" DOS cdrom drivers aren't finding the sound card CD-ROM drive. Might want to Google for the SYS.

 

[AnMig]

config.sys:

files=30
buffers=30
device=c:\dos\mtmcdai.sys /d:cd01


autoexec.bat

c:\dos\mscdex.exe /d:cd01



this brings back bad memories of me needing to creat a boot disk to be able to run some of my old dos games

 

[drwoo123]

Did someone say QEMM 🙂 -- ahhh the olden days.

 

[jsalpha2]

Now if there is room you could pick up an old 2gig hard drive at the flea market and double their storage.
I would copy W95 to that and then install from it as suggested above. My old AST 486Sx33 also has the
CD plugged into the sound card. One day I need to take it out of the clset and play with it. If you like flea markets and thrift store shopping that is probably the only way to find more RAM for that oldtimer.


The puter, not the neighbor

 

[CryHavoc]

I was the QEMM master. Spent hours trying different LH (loadhigh) combinations to get the most base ram back from all those device drivers.

Now if I could only remember the difference between extended and expanded memory, I would be alright....ah screw it...It doesn't matter anymore.

hey think quick.

name the irq's and the address for com1 and com2 and lpt1 and 2.....

Here's another one for us ol timers..

ever had to populate the Intel Above board with those 36 256k dram chips, only to find that no matter how carefull you were installing each one, running the checker seems to always find one with a bent pin. But it sure was nice having that onscreen chart telling you which chip(s) were bad.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Originally posted by: Derango

Originally posted by: redbeard1
It works best to copy the win95 cab files to the hard rive and run the install from that.

That also has the nice side effect of having windows not ask you for the windows cd every time you install a driver 😉

This is the only way to fly.. No fuss, No muss. Boot to a Win98 boot floppy, cd to the directory, Have at it. This is the only way I can install Win95 on this crusty old Toshiba lappy I have.