Old Pentium Problem

[bschears]

I just purchased an Ast Pentium with 166 MHZ. It has a 2Gig Harddrive, and I am having difficulty installing DOS 6.2.2 on it. I realize that this is an old computer but maybe you all can help. The harddrive was formatted prior to my receiving the computer. Common sense would denote (I believe) that you have to insert the first disk of DOS into the disk drive for the computer to read. However when I do this, it begins to read the disk, then does nothing. Not long after that, it goes to a blank screen with a blinking underscore at the top left hand side. I have to restart after that each time. I've tried going in a refiguring the system setup, and nothing helps. Is there something faulty with my disk? Is that a possibility. I pulled the harddrive out of the AST and put it into a Dell of equal speed and the like, but the same thing occured when I tried to install on the harddrive using the same disk as before. Anybody have any really good advice on this one??

[Rick]

The best way to start is from the basics.
Boot from the Dos622 disk
Run Fdisk to ensure the drive is partitioned using Fat16 .
And marked Active
After the reboot Format the drive

Check the First DOS disk for installation information.
**( remember DOS is NOT plug and play and unless it has an autoexec.bat it is NOT autorun)**
Hopefully you have a full version of DOS 622 and NOT the upgrade.
If it has a full installation program on the first disk just use that it should perform all the needed steps for the remainder of the installation..

IF No installation routine is included then follow these steps
Then run SYS c:
This will transfer the O/S to the hard drive
Reboot and allow the system to start from the hard drive.

Then Create a DOS directory from the C:\ prompt type “ MD DOS”
then you can copy the dos commands to that folder.

You will also need to create a config.sys and autoexec.bat file to adjust the system to your needs

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Can one return a HDD from FAT32 to FAT16 to install an older OS?

I ask because I tried to load W95 on a FAT32 the other day and ran into an error so I put 98 in instead.

Thanks,

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This space for George Carlin quotes:

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

(He should broaden that to pc's.)

[Alejandro]

bschears: also check the diskette you are trying to boot from for errors (with Scandisk, Disk doctor or similar) or try booting with another diskette.
Fruss Tray Ted: You have two ways of doing this:
a) If you don't care loosing all the drive contents, then use fdisk (from the Windows 98 boot disk) to delete the existing FAT32 partition. Then boot again and start fdisk once more. When asked if you want to enable large disk support choose No, create new partitions (I think maximum FAT16 size is about 2GB each) and format them after restarting.
b) You can use Powerquest Partition Magic to convert from FAT32 to FAT16 without loosing anything, but this is a commercial program and in some rare cases it might fail (as for me it failed only once leaving me with wasted free space).

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Was the free space you lost permanent or recoverable with an fdisk after? There's nothing but W98SE on the drive at this moment, it's my practice (read 'What happens if I do this?' OOPS!) PC. And I did a doosey on it too but that's another thread in itself later. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif Get your thinking cap on...

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This space for George Carlin quotes:

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

(He should broaden that to pc's.)

[iisbob]

Hmmm, to my knowledge no program-3rd party or otherwise can revert a file system, once you go " up " in conversion you can't go down.

The easiest way to do this is to use a progam like Ranish (http://www.ranish.com/part/) to erase the boot record ( or zero wipe the drive ) or you can use the Debug command, or even Delpart to get rid of the partition.

Then set up the partition/file system as you wish.

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

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iisbob

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.-Mark Twain

[bschears]

I downloaded a boot disk online, and managed to run scandisk on the DOS 622 disk 1. When the Scandisk was only 5 percent done, it had already found 43 bad sectors, and when all was said and done, there were 97 bad sectors. So, I am getting a fresh tested version from my little brother which has no issues with it...hopefully. Thanks for the advice!!

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Sound like you had a direct connection with a lightning rod on the roof of the house in an electrical storm! That's a pile of bad sectors. I have a 1 gig on one of my older pc's with about 7-10 sectors gone but it works OK as long as I find the files that end up missing and reinstall them to a different folder in effect different sectors. But in your case, that's too many and in too critical an area.

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This space for George Carlin quotes:

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

(He should broaden that to pc's.)

[This message has been edited by Fruss Tray Ted (edited 05-31-2002).]

[Paleo Pete]

iisbob I have to disagree on this one, which is highly unusual...I can't verify it, but I think what was posted above is correct, if you run fdisk and delete all partitions, reboot then run fdisk again, it should ask if you want to enable Large Disk Support, which is FAT 32 as you already know. If you say No, it should repartition the drive as FAT 16. I think I've done it, but can't remember for sure and can't try it out right now to prove or disprove it, no test machine set up.

I'm almost positive it will work, but as I said I can't prove or disprove it at the moment.

bschears when you format the hard drive, don't use the /s switch, the DOS 6.22 installation will tell you it found an existing OS installation and say it can't install. It can, if you read the whole thing and tell it to install over the existing one, but not using the /s switch saves a bit of trouble. The DOS installation routine will make the hard drive bootable.

With that many bad clusters, it's not surprising the disk failed, it must have been stored on top of one of my guitar speakers for the past 3 or 4 years...maybe someone tried to microwave it?? lol...let us know how it comes out...

One question, why are you installing DOS? I'm just curious, unless you're trying to install win3.x or 95A it's not absolutely necessary to install DOS as well. 95B and up will run without it, 95A might but I've never tried it, always used DOS...and always use 95B now if I use 95 at all, since it's a bit better than 95A, supports FAT32 and has better driver support.

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If your nose runs and your feet smell...
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[Alejandro]

Fruss Tray Ted: Yes, it was recoverable, it just left space unasigned to any partition. But i was trying to split the main partition into 2 smaller ones, not converting file systems. Although i think that feature works good, have in mind that if currently you have one FAT32 partition bigger than 2 GB, most probably you'll be asked to split it in order to convert to FAT16.
I currently have a 10GB HD split into 2 FAT32 partitions (one primary one logical) and entered Partition Magic to see what options i have. When trying to convert to FAT16 the primary one, the FAT16 option is unabled, but not with the logical one, so it should be possible. However if you don't care about the content then just go ahead with the fdisk option, is much easier, free, and faster.

I think some of you people misundertood (is that written ok?) bschears posts: when referring to disk with bad sectors i think he meant the DOS boot diskette, not the 2GB hard drive. If not, then forgive me!

[bschears]

Sorry about that...It was the DOS disk that had the bad sectors.

Being as I am a newbie, I didn't know that my WIN 95B would install without DOS. At this point I haven't been able to get my CD Rom to work, hence I've been unable to get the WIN95 to go either. I have been unable to find drivers for my cd-rom, due to their being no id tag or info on the cd-rom to find out who manufactured it. Anybody know a site where I can get random drivers for the CD-ROM?

Paleo Pete Had I only read your post before I formatted the hard drive last night...you are right it tells me that there is another OS and it won't install. Once I find the cd-rom driver, and install WIN95B should that take care of it?

Note to All: Thanks for all of your help...this lovely computer that I bought off of E-bay for $19.00 has become quite a headache for me the past few days, and I appreciate all the help you guys have given me.
Don't hesitate to continue sending advice. Thanks again..bschears

[Alejandro]

Ok then, if what you want is just to install Win95B, you should do the following.
1 - Get a WIN 98 boot disk (it has a couple more things that the win 95 one, including ATAPI CDROM drivers that will work with almost any cdrom (till now worked with all for me).
2 - If you have a FAT32 partition with all HD space assigned to it, and it's active, then keep it that way, if not create it with fdisk.
3 - Booting from the WIN98 disk enabling cd rom support, format the partition using "format c: /s".
4 - When finished put your win95 cd in and copy the Instalation files folder to your HD. This is because while at this moment you have cdrom support because you booted from diskette, when win95 instalation reboots it will not load them, so the installer won't find some files, and you'll have to add the missing .vxd and other system files manually (a very unpleasant task i REALLY do not recommend).
5 - Reboot the system without the boot disk. It should boot from C: very fast.
6 - Go to the win95 folder you copied to your HD and install from there.

That's it!

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Bschears,
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, uh, I mean the icons under my name. I'm as Neo as you. I've only been here a month or two but with a blabbermouth and a lot to learn I racked up a lot of posts real quick.

What pc are you using now? Can you make a boot floppy with it? 98 and ME should work for 95. If your on one of these go to start>settings>control panel>add/remove hardware>startup disk tab. Format a diskette and then create disk. This will give you your boot floppy to proceed with fdisk if needed>format if needed and install with cd-rom support.

Your BIOS should have the generic drivers to be able to run your cd-rom. If not, your problem is out of my league. But I'll be all ears like this >---> """ http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif """ http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/tongue.gif

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This space for George Carlin quotes:

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

(He should broaden that to pc's.)

OOPS I stand corrected Alejandro and you beat me to the punch http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif

[This message has been edited by Fruss Tray Ted (edited 05-31-2002).]

[Alejandro]

I think Win95 CD is not bootable, however i dislike the idea. For me it's just more reliable doing things the other way.
However, take advice that WinME boot disk does NOT support the format "/s" option (another -GREAT- idea from the brilliant minds at Microsoft) so it won't be able to make your HD bootable. I think the Win98 disk is the best one.

[bschears]

Does it matter whether or not it is Win 98 SE or Win 98? I can get both. At work I'm on a Win2K and downloaded from www.bootdisk.com (http://www.bootdisk.com)
I figured since it was Second Edition, then it would be the better of the two? Sound good?

PS Sorry about all the questions. By the time I get done, I'll be a Grand Master...hehe

[This message has been edited by bschears (edited 05-31-2002).]

[This message has been edited by bschears (edited 05-31-2002).]

[Alejandro]

never tried Win98 "first edition" myself, since it's a microsoft product, maybe it was better, they seem to add annoyances and errors instead of repairing them on every upgrade.
However, been using the Win98SE for quite some time now, with no problems at all (except that it's sooooo slow).
By the way, keep in mind that i'm from Argentina, hence all the Windows versions I use are in spanish. While the only difference should be the language, i've heard many cases of microsoft products that prove this is not truth (MS Visual Basic 6 for example)

[Paleo Pete]

The win98 start up disk from both versions should be the same, I haven't noticed any difference a all.

As far as the differences between the OS's themselves, Win98SE had more drivers, IE5 instead of 4, better USB support and Internet Connection Sharing. Otherwise no major differences, I've used both and had no more trouble with one than the other. The problems I did have were related more to 3rd party software, drivers and flaky memory than win98 itself.

------------------
If your nose runs and your feet smell...
You're built upside down!
Note: Please post your questions on the forums, not in my email.

Computer Information Links (http://www.dreamwater.com/paleopete/computer.htm) has been moved, please update your bookmarks.

[iisbob]

Pete i think i was misunderstood, what i mean is that i know of no way to revert a file system without formatting/reinstalling; ie-you can use window's native tools to convert a FAT to FAT32 or FAT to NTFS, but it's a one way street.

Can't undo a better file system for an older one with a converter.

I believed that was what the poster was telling /asking and that was what i was referring to. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

But you are quite right, that when you remove the partition-then you can add any file system type you wish.



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iisbob

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.-Mark Twain

[Paleo Pete]

iisbob Same here, guess we both got our wires crossed. I thought you were saying it couldn't be done at all, and I'm pretty sure I've done it but since I've dealt with so many older/used hard drives and swapping between win3.x/9x I can't really remember...

------------------
If your nose runs and your feet smell...
You're built upside down!
Note: Please post your questions on the forums, not in my email.

Computer Information Links (http://www.dreamwater.com/paleopete/computer.htm) has been moved, please update your bookmarks.

[bschears]

Good News...The computer is up and running! Thanks a lot for all of your help. I now know of a great place to check for advice and use in case of need. Thanks again folks!!

Bschears

[Paleo Pete]

Coolness has been achieved!! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

------------------
If your nose runs and your feet smell...
You're built upside down!
Note: Please post your questions on the forums, not in my email.

Computer Information Links (http://www.dreamwater.com/paleopete/computer.htm) has been moved, please update your bookmarks.