Windows 98 Installation Error

[cbsmith]

My dad was having trouble with his PC. It was getting registry erros on startup and was lockign up. He had just installed a new motherboard. It had been almost 2 years since Windows was installed, so I thought it was about time to format and reinstall.

I backed up everything he needed to his D; drive and formatted C:. Ihten copied the Windows 98SE CAB files to the c: drive and started the install. It went into the setup and then I got a message at the top of the screen that said "Attention: A serious disk error occurred while writing to Drive A. Retry? [R]". If I press R it just comes back again. I formatted the C: drive again and this time tried to do the install from the CD directly, but it still got the same error. I set BIOS up to boot from the CDROM and had it boot from the CD. This time it got through the firts part of the setup, but gave me the same error when it was 92% through detecting devices.

I am not sure why it is trying to write to the A: drive. The only thing htta I can think of is that it means C: drive instead of A: drive.

Has anyone else seen this error before?

Thanks,

Chris:|

 

[stingray2]

I assume you used a win98 boot floppy disk (in your a:\ drive) to boot from, when you formated your C:\ drive? did you then transfer the sysytem boot files to your c:\ drive? not sure, but ran into a problem when installing Win98 last week, when I formated my C:\ drive (after booting from a win98 boot disk, with cd support option) and then started the setup of win98.. the install failed during a restart, because my C:\ was not configured as a boot device. I had to boot from my win98 startup floppy, and at the A:\ prompt type this: SYS C:\
I then was able to restart my install process.
also, just so you know, anytime you change a motherboard, you must do a clean install of windows. it is a must!!

 

[cbsmith]

I used a Windows 98 Startup disk to get me to a DOS prompt with CDROm support. Then I formatted C: drive. Then I copied the CAb files form the Windows 98 CD to a directory on C drive. Then I started the setup. It went through Scan disk and then started the setup and then gave me the error.

I rebooted using the floppy and tried again, but sane thing. I formatted C drive and then rebooted with the floppy again. I then started the install diretcly from the CD. IT gave me the error at the same point. I formatted C drive again, with system files and rebooted and tried to install from the CD, but it still did the same thing. I made the CDROM boot first and booted using the Windows CD and it got to 92% of detecting devices and gave me the error.

I looked around on the internet and found messages like this that say Drive C instead of Drive A. It seemed to meant thta the hard drive is dying. On the Knowledge Base at Microsoft it said to try runnign Scandisk with the Thorough option on all the hard drives and see if it finds any errors. I am doing thta now, so I will see what happens.

Also, I know it is reocmmended to reinstall Windows with a motherboard swap, but it is not necessary. I recently switched from a PII 333 to an Athlon 1.2GHz and ran for a week before I reinstalled Windows. It worked almost perfectly as well.

Thanks for the help,

Chris

 

[AmazonRasta]

Here's an idea - Install Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

Garunteed not to get any Windows 98 installation errors .

 

[Tsaico]

If I plan to copy the cab files over, I usually "format c:/s" and put the system files onto the c: then I restart the computer and let it get to the prompt on its own. From there is all the same. Does the computer ever try to access the A: drive? I would go with the advice of using the failsafes. Sometime that can stop certain errors from happening.