[Soul Of Cerberus]

Hi,

I have windows 95 on my laptop and i'm trying to upgrade to 98 I have the 98 cd but its not the 98 upgrade and my computer is an old model that can't boot from cd to install this.. is there any way to uninstall 95 from the computer..?

How do you clean swipe a hard drive like they do when they sell them?

Thats what I really need to do..

Thanks!

[Advertisements]

Ok.. Ill be glad to help you with this as I have lots of experience of reinstalling.

First, tell me your specs on the laptop.

Second, is there a floppy disk on the laptop?

[ultimateslacker2]

Ok.. Ill be glad to help you with this as I have lots of experience of reinstalling.

First, tell me your specs on the laptop.

Second, is there a floppy disk on the laptop?

[Soul Of Cerberus]

It's a toshiba satellite 400CS laptop an old model it has 774 MB Harddrive and 16MB Ram I don't know much about it I just bought it from the pawn shop and it has 95 on it but its all corrupted and keeps doing wierd things and my friend lend me his 98 cd to use for it..

It has a floppy drive only but can be interchanged to a cd drive cuz I have both pieces but only one can be used at a time.. I'm basically new to computers but I needed a laptop do do some papers while i'm out of town but i just need anything and I dont have a lot of money to invest in an expensive one cuz I just need word pad basically and a few office programs that i use at the office..

But the 95 that is on it keeps popping up error messages and it says that there is so many viruses on it so I figured I just can instal a fresh operating system and be done with it..

I really don't know too much about specs thats all i know about it and I have the little floppy boot disk that comes with the 98 but everytime i put start with cd-rom support it says drivers not fount aborting instalation..

Is there a way to just take everything off of the hard drive? and be done with it?

Edited by Soul Of Cerberus, 08 October 2006 - 09:39 PM.

[ultimateslacker2]

Well with the specs you have, you CAN run windows 98 but will be painfully slow. Heres the system requirements

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182751

Ok about wiping your harddrive.

plug in your floppy drive into that interchange slot.

boot up with a 98 start up floppy disk.

Choose start computer WITHOUT cd-rom support as you have no cd-rom in at the moment.

when your at the a:\ prompt, type this following command at the prompt

(format c:) -without the quotes please.

It will say ALL DATA ON DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST.
PROCEED? Y/N

choose Y as in yes so it will formatt the harddrive and there will be no operating system on it.

Edited by NickX, 08 October 2006 - 09:55 PM.

[Soul Of Cerberus]

Hmmmm that didnt work it says bad command or file name..?

[ultimateslacker2]

Make sure you typed it right. DOS commands are case senstitave.
try these 2 commands seperately if these dont work than I have another idea.

format c: /s
format c: /q

Edited by NickX, 09 October 2006 - 08:30 AM.

[Soul Of Cerberus]

Okay I did something else I deleted the partion of the hard drive and now it says Missing operating system but then i put my boot disk in the floppy and I started it in every option but being that my cd drive is not connected at the same time it says drivers not found aborting instalation

Thank you for all your help it means so much to me!

[ultimateslacker2]

Oh I love helping people out. I am a junior techie in these things but im only in high school.

Ok I was gonna say to you if those commands dont work We were gonna use a utility called Killdisk. Killdisk wipes every single partition clean but theres no need for that as you already deleted it.

Ok about putting a partition on your harddrive. it seems like your gonna need a XP or 2000 cd because I have no other opition for this right now.

Put the CD ROM in the interchange slot. put in a XP or 2000 disc inside the cd rom and reboot. when it wants you to choose your partition if it will hopefully let you since this is a small harddrive, choose FAT32. When thats done take out the CD-ROM and reboot with the 98 disk in. Hopefully this will work. If not post back. I'll try and think of something else in the meantime.

[Soul Of Cerberus]

See the thing is I only have the 98 OS I dont have xp or 2000 and my computer can only boot from hard drive or floppy don't worry about it I'm sure I will figure something out..

Only in high school huh? your pretty smart! A+ for helping me!

[ultimateslacker2]

LOL i hate older laptops.

Thanks for the compliment. Really appreciate it.

Ok we really need to get you to the a:\ prompt

Can you try the floppy thing again?

This one stumped me.

[Soul Of Cerberus]

yeah I can get into the a: prompt thingy but being that i cant put both drives in at once it wont let me do anything because it says the drive is not found tomorrow i will take some pix for you of whats going on.. but i dont think there is any way to fix this...

[ultimateslacker2]

Ok heres one opition I deff doubt this will work but hey its worth a shot anymore

Go into the BIOS and change your CD-ROM to boot first and it should say Press any key from CD. If you get the error message Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM failure than I failed. LOL

I will look up a solution for you if I can find one but till than try that one out.

[ultimateslacker2]

Alright click this link. Maybe this will help you.

http://www.windowsre...dexfullpage.htm

[Soul Of Cerberus]

I cannot set my laptop to boot to cd only other choice then hard drive to boot on is floppy drive..

So thanks I'm stuck unless i add more money to it and get a external cd drive but im scared that all the external drives wont be able to connect on this because its an old pooter...

oh well....

[ultimateslacker2]

Hmm.. see if you can find a windows 98 boot up CD instead of a floppy. I "THINK" they make them. google around and see what you find.

Sorry that I couldnt help you.