Trouble with reinstalling win98 on a gateway box.

Tripleshot

Elite Member
Jan 29, 2000
7,218
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I just tried Gateways chat with a tech feature to resolve this. What a joke.
The computer would not detect the d; drive(cdrom). I installed drivers from a cdom disk on the bench and now in dos I can se and read a cdrom disk in the D drive. Thats good. I try to reboot and it will not start windows. it says install dos disk in A drive at post. WTF:confused:

So,i figure win98 is corrupt and go about forcing the puter to start from cdrom and re install win98. In the middle of trying to re install, I get an error message that it cant install on propritary program(or something like that)(big white box in middle of screen with bold ERROR highlighted)
The chat tech(jack) at gateway says re install windows. How can I do it if something is blocking the install process?

This is chapping my ars!:|
 

Nessism

Golden Member
Dec 2, 1999
1,619
1
81
Is this an old Pentium 1 system by chance? While I'm not worthy of offering advice to a Elite Member...well...WTF. Just for kicks try installing the CD drive as a slave to the hard drive. I had this same problem on an old system from work and this was the only way I could get the system to recognize the CD-ROM for some reason. Sorry for the half baked answer and good luck.
 

Tripleshot

Elite Member
Jan 29, 2000
7,218
1
0
Nessism

Never ever think that Elite means we know it all.That can never be.Your help is what I seek. those that help get to become Elite as I understand it.

My problem is not the cdrom anymore. I can't get the rascal to boot to win98. And I can't get the sytem to let me re install win98,because it kicks it out with ther error message. I think if I can get the system to re install the os,then win98 will detect everything and fix any botched files in the registry.

Thank you for trying.;)
 

Ornery

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
20,022
17
81
Would you be opposed to FDISKing it? Get a copy of FDISK from the version of Windows that you intend to use, onto a floppy and have at it. Autodetect the drive in the BIOS again. Set the BIOS to boot from the CDROM. I can't imagine it not working at that point.

Edit:Oops, forgot, read this too.
 

Tripleshot

Elite Member
Jan 29, 2000
7,218
1
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Ornery
Fdisk will clean off the HDD. I am trying to avoid that,as it is a customers computer with alot of private data on it..In my mastering windows 98 SE by Robert Cowart,there are some other steps I can use before such a drastic measure,however,I need to find out from Gateway how to rem out the files that are blocking the reinstall of windows.Reinstall windows is what Gateway said to do and the manual says to do,and common sense. These dang propriatary proggys are in the way.

Thats why I hate dealing with the likes of Dell,Compaq,HP and Gateway. They all have there own little proggy that forces you to pay for thier services to fix what they screw up from a normal installtion.