swap hard drive on Gateway 2000 p133?

[enfer]

Is it possible to swap the master/primary hd running Windows 95 with one running windows 98 on Gateway 2000 p133? What changed settings are necessary in setup? No floppy disks came with used system, only windows 95 original disk.

[classicsoftware]

Are both drives installed already? Are you trying to get a free upgrade to Win98?

What are you trying to accomplish????

[enfer]

I want to be able to use the fujitsu drive with 98 and existing emails and files from a defunct machine I own. The drive was working when removed. The Gateway tower has lots of room in it for extra drives. Is this not ok? I thought since 98 was originally purchased and installed on the fujitsu dirve and I have the disk too it was ok to use it in a different case. Ideally I'd then like to use the original drive as a backup. I don't want to do anything illegal! I'm just learning about hardware and thought this would be a good way to learn, and combine working parts of several machines we have here, to use for email and word processing only.

I physically installed fujitsu in place of the orig drive, following insturcitons in Gateway book for swapping drives. I only get to the Floopy A: Installed line on starup.

If I am too dumb for all you more expereinced folks, just let me know and I'll go elsewhere. I spent a whole day reading and searching various tech support and got nowhere. I couldn't even determine if I needed some sort of BIOS upgrade in order to install a shiny new w98 on this system, if I can get one somewhere. Then I could maybe somehow use this drive as secondary drive an just transfer my files, maybe?
Thanks.

[classicsoftware]

what you want to do is very difficult. You will first need to download all of the drivers for all devices. You will have to install all the programs that are presently installed on the c drive again.

It would be easier to use the the "new" drive as a second drive in the system.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

That depends how many peripherals along with the pc. Modem, monitor, sound drivers = a piece of cake. :) Then printer, scanner etc...

No, no BIOS upgrade just to load 98 but if the drive were very new you might have to for the BIOS to detect the drive. This doesn't seem to be the case.

More info about the individual systems and add-ons like printers would help along with what disks you have. Do you want to run with both drives connected at the same time? Then you'd need to unactivate the Active partition on one of them. But first:
____________________________--

Let's get the 98 drive squared away.

The first problem I see is getting an A: prompt with the newer drive in place. Let's hope the OS is still intact. Make sure the jumper on the drive is on either master or cable select and you are trying to use it as the only drive connected to the end of the primary IDE cable. Does it still not boot? Then reboot and look in BIOS to see if it is detected. Put selection for primary HDD to auto if not already.

Let us know your progress and there's no snobs here so you don't have to run away... ok? R U :cool: with that?

BTW, welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif forums!

[enfer]

Thank you for the encouragement.

The fujitsu is 3.2 GB Ultra ATA MPC3032AT connected to the primary IDE cable connector. Only drive. It was invisible set to default master, so I found another speicial option at fujitsu tech support, and used that. Specs say special cable required for csel.

On startup screen, the drive is listed as being recognized as 0 drive (on screen), then the CD-ROM as G, then the Installed Floppy A, which is where it stops. I can't get into setup with F1. If I insert a home made Windows 95 startup disk I found from the old system, and never used before, it goes on to the A:\ prompt. If I restart hodling down F1, I can get into setup.

In setup now, Hard Disk C is fujitsu, Auto Configured, numbers for physical parameters, auto detected for other settings. In Boot options, order is CD-Rom, Floppy, Hard Disk, 4th boot Disabled- System Cache enabled, Boot speed Turbo, NumLock off, setup prompt enabled, typematic rate default.

I wanted to use the orig WD drive as a backup, after getting the fujitsu running, if possible. Should I reinstall the orig drive as primary with these new jumper settings for fujitsu and see if it is accessible that way? I know I would need to enable them both in setup. This is how I started using the original factory jumper settings days ago. I just stumbeled on the alternte settings at fujitsu support yesterday afternoon.

Thanks.:cool:

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Wasn't that a cartoon or something? :D

I've worked in Belfast a couple jobs, heck we're less than an hour apart. Try Winslow just the other side of Unity. :cool:

Using your startup disk, at the A:\> prompt, type C:\ Then type scandisk. When it is done you will be asked if you want a surface scan. Press enter if the yes or equivalent is highlighted. This will show how much space is used on the harddrive by number of clusters.

If you decide to put the 2 drives on at once you will need to disable the secondary drive's 'active' partition and set the jumper to slave. I think you will need a disk utility like Partition Magic to do this. Because 'fdisk' with your boot floppy will lose all the info stored.

[enfer]

We actually have a "Here's Waldo" day... Are you one of those folks out at the chicken barn full of PC parts?

Could not run anything from startup disk and A prompt with Fujitsu set to master, only drive connected. It's been a few days and I spent so much time at this I've forgotten the exact sequence to success but I was tenacious, and prevailed.

The jumper settings pritned on Fujitsu were not usable. Used alternate settings on Fujitsu site, solved one problem. Forgot that Fujitsu HD was partitioned. Apparntly boot setup could see it as a funcitoning drive but not boot from it or access the contents directly - drive letter conflict maybe? (I'm still unclear on drive letters, as the primary drive is C within the operating system and listed as 0 in setup screens, and 1 in FDISK, if I remember)

I reinstalled the 95 HD as master, was then able see contents of Fujitsu as slave and use FDISK from MS-DOS to remvoe the extra partitions one at a time leaving only the one with W98. Swapped jumpers etal, still no boot. Finally reformatted Fujitsu with one primary partition. With Fujitsu as master, orig HD as slave, restarted with the original W98 CD, which allowed me to run setup and reinstall W98. I of course lost my old files, but oh well. If I'd been thinking straight, I could have moved them onto the original HD and then back to Fujitsu... I was then able to boot from fujitsu, run FDISK again to clean up the orig drive for use as backup.

So it's working now just fine, and I learned an unbelievable amount in the process. Perhaps W98 will not boot from a partitioned disk, maybe it needs to be partitioned after it is installed? Somewhere in there I had to use the little switches to reset the CMOS settings to default as well, which was another area I became intimate with in this process.

I really appreciate this forum, and found other clues here once the system was reinstalled re: error messages, and read the thorough section on FDISK. Thanks for your tips. No doubt I'll be back now that Pandora's box has been opened...:D