Hey,
With that ol' computer of mine that I gave my very technologically confused mother to use, it now has many new problems. She lives 3 hours away, and everytime I go back home, I'm always at her house fixing the mess she creates when she clicks everywhere. I have been trying to set her up with one of the free ISP's, but nothing seems to be too stable. I started her on Juno, and she was able to only do email but no web access for some reason. I tried to figure out why it won't connect to the web. It will dial in for her email but no web. I belive that the system was really screwed up and didn't know where else to turn, but to perform something really dumb...
I tried to re-load windows 95 again thinking it would "re-set" everything. I went through the process but before it was complete, an error came up when it was about 70% through. I had to stop it since it wasn't moving anyway. I shut down, but now it won't boot up but as far as DOS. I have no idea what to do. I tired putting the windows 95 CD in, and type d:/win 95, it then shows the windows 95 screen, then shuts to a blue error screen telling me to set up windows due to this error. How do I do that? I don't know DOC at all really, just a bunch of quits, exits, and hopes....How can I set up windows in DOS? I can't get to windows at all. Would it be worth to load windows 98 on it? Why do you think I had an error when I was re-loading windows, is it because I was doing it on top of it?
Thanks

I would probably wipe it all out and over fresh....for that you will need a bootdisk with CDrom support (there is a link on my site on how to make one....it will give you a little more experience working in DOS) and here[url] is how to put it all back. And of course backups of anything (data files) that she may want to keep....

As for going to 98, depending on the systems specs it may not be much of and vantage...refresh us and we'll let you know...

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mjc
Links list:[url="http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm"]Computer Links (http://www.pcguide.com/proc/sw/w95rec-c.html)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

I’ve had my share of Windows 95/98 installs and this is what I would do.
If you have a Windows 95 start up disk, boot off that first.
Select #1 with CD support.
Presuming you have one hard drive, the boot disk will create a ram drive as D:
Select the CD drive that has Windows 95 in it. Depending on how many CD drives you have it will be either E: or F:
For example if your Windows 95 CD is in the E: drive, just type, E:\setup and press enter.

I would suggest to always install Windows 95/98 this way and never in the OS itself.

Good luck http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Hey,
thanks for that imput, I went to the site and didn't have time to really read and figure it out.
John, I was just in Portland during the attacks, that where I was stuck. Nice little city, I had time to see some things what is it, Montaloma Falls or something like that? It was much of a trickle.
Anyway back to the issue:

I can only assume that the web site will tell me how to do it in DOS (I HOPE)
The system has only 1 hard drive. I have the windows 95 cd that came with the system, but when I was running it, it errored out and created this problem. Did it do that because I was in the OS? I'm concerned that this disk might be crap because this computer was purchased off the TV in 1997 ( I didn't know any better then =) )
The system boots to the c:/ in DOS and waits for input. I'll check out the site and hopeit helps me. If anyone else has more ideas, feel free. I don't have much time to fix things because i'm so far away, so when I go, I need to try and fix it, make it work, and load up some ISP. All in 1/2 hour....nah kidding. =) That computer's too slooooow.

John is probably right on this one; a fresh install would be best-i'll see if i can walk you through the steps, { it's pretty much the same for 95&98 } Make sure you have a startup floppy; you can create one on your system if necessary, Important!-when you boot with this floppy, and unless you're installing Win95B ( which included FAT32 support ) and the hard drive is bigger than 2 GB's-then say no when it asks you do you want large disk support with FAT32 ( original w95 used the FAT16 file systm) Next choose No CD rom support-you don't need it just yet, and at the A:> commandprompt type FDISK /STATUS, this wil tell you what partitions you have available on your drive-then type in the FDISK command by itself and once in the menu choose the delete options, and delete your Primary and any extended/logical drives Reboot, go back into FDISK again { note-you don't choose CDrom support until we're actually going to install windows } and now create your primary partition over; i would suggest using the entire drive since you are not famaliar with setting up partitions-this will give her all the drive to use as 1 drive ( aka entier drive will be C: ) Once the primary has been created you'll have to boot again now at the prompt ( remember no CDROM support yet ) type Format c: /u-this does what's called an " unconditional " format and will make sure to erase all data that cpould be on the drive-reboot again and after getting back to the prompt, now type Format c: /s-this will set up the drive with the necessary system files to begin installation of Windows Now, after allthat is done-choose CDROM support and then goto to your D: drive and type in setup-you should then have windows beginning a fresh install


Hopefully this will help you a little, as mjc suggested-depending on the hardware of this machine, W98 may not be a good choice-95 may be beter suited to it.



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iisbob
"Ward, come upstairs and talk to The Beaver."
-- June (Mrs. Frisky) Cleaver

You probably mean Klamath Falls. Been there myself a few times. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif
Yeah. We've had a very dry summer this year.

I'm sure that the CD is fine. You just attempted to install the OS while in the OS itself. It has to overwrite files. It can't overwrite files that are in use.

I'm sure that if you install from real DOS (not windowed dos) it will overwrite any messed up files in your Windows directory.
Also be prepared to install video, sound, ect... drivers as well.

The main thing in real DOS is to have access to the CD drives. Without that, the CD can't be used. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif