Posted: 1/11/2006 6:53:58 PM EDT
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A friend of mine gave me an old laptop to replace my kids' older desktop PC. He no longer has the Win XP discs. I want to wipe the hard drive and install my Win 98 that came with the desktop. If I just format the C drive, will the laptop still be able to recognize the CD drive, so I can use it to install Win 98? Or is there something else I need to do? |
Your Win98 disks, are they a full install or just an upgrade? Check the BIOS and see if it has an option to boot from the CD, if it does then if you have the Win98 full install you can just pop those in and boot from the CD. Delete all the partitions on the drive and create new ones. If it's old enough, it'll be FAT16 partitions, which you don't want. For Win98 you want to use FAT32. |
Yes, it's a full install that came with the desktop. |
98 probably came with a startup floppy.. you would use that to format the drive and to make it boot and recignise the cd rom. then from there it is setup.exe |
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If it won't boot from the CD drive, you should use win 98 to make a startup disk. I really don't remember how to do this, but if you insert a floppy into a working computer running win 98, then right click the drive, select "format" and select the startup disk option. boot the laptop with this disk, then install windows. |
No, you don't. The CD will boot itself if your BIOS supports it. |
Actually, the laptop came with ME. He lost the disk for that, and when he had some problems, he installed XP using the disk from his other laptop. |
WinME is not an OS, it's a virus. |
I once saw a list of evidence to back that up. 
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Yeah, it usually works better that way. Also, before you nuke the O.S., look in device manager and write down the type of video card/network adapter/modem/sound card etc and look on the manufacturers website to make sure you can find Win98 drivers for them. |
om, i thought win. 98 had to boot from the first partition on the drive or something? XP can boot off of extended partitions, but 98? eta: /sbin/fdisk /dev/hda |
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It's obviously been so long that many of you have forgotten that DOS-based Windows OSs (meaning: up to Win98SE) did not come on bootable CDs. You had to have a boot floppy disk with the IDE CD drivers loaded on it in order to install Windows from a CD. WindowsNT-based OSs (including Win2000 and WinXP) have always been bootable from the CD. There have been some WAREZ CDs made for Win98 that were made bootable with aftermarket utilities, but that's another discussion altogether. Anyway, if the laptop came with WinME (the worst MS OS ever made!), then you really should install XP on it. And max out its RAM. -Troy |
Windows 98se is bootable from the CD |
+1 I use 98SE bootable cd's all the time at work. I would you have about a 75/25 chance that your 98SE cd is bootable. |
Alot of "restore disks" for pcs are bootable, this is how the pc manufacture designed it, but an actual retail version or an OEM version from MS was not bootable, they both came with a boot floppy. If this laptop came with ME on it, see what you can do for ram and run XP. if you max out at 256, then Win2K w/SP4 would be a great alternative. Avoid WinME at all costs 
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OK, I booted the 98 install disk from the CD drive, and it prompted me to format the C drive, which I did. There was no partition on the drive. 98 is installed and running, but I have some serious driver problems. I downloaded the drivers from the HP website, and I'm going to try and install them when I go home for lunch. Right now, my desktop size is 640x480 at 16 colors, the modem isn't recognized, and the keyboard is not working correctly. Hopefully the keyboard issue is a driver problem and I didn't FUBAR it when I was making a repair to the DC power jack. 
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What I never heard of is WinXP automatically having a D: drive. That's crap. That's just his specific configuration. |
I've seen more than a few computers by Compaq and HP that partition the drive. Usually, the D: drive is essentially and on-board recovery disk so you don't have to mess with the CD. |
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Download DBN (Dariks Boot and Nuke) to wipe your HD and any partitions. You shouldn't install one operating system over the other, particularly when going from XP back to Windows. If you have a floppy to boot your PC from, then there is no need to do this: When you are ready to nuke/reinstall your operating system, restart your PC and enter into BIOS, change the boot order to CDROM, HDD, Floppy. Exit and save. After it boots up, insert your disc and restart again. Now you can nuke/install your OS. |
That's the worst thing about doing this.... All the freaking updating and driver searching!!! argh!!! After you have everything up-to-date, a word of advice would be to go into the Device Manager and locate all of your drivers for a specific item and burn them to a CD so that you can do this much easier/faster next time. |
Ahh, I see. Yeah, specific config per manufacture. Interesting setup. |
im afraid your wrong, i use OEM windows 98 cds EVERYDAY to flash bios's on computers. scan fat32 harddrives in dos. They ARE bootable |