Thrilling Days of Yesteryear...Win98 Rebuild

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Thrilling Days of Yesteryear...Win98 Rebuild

Posted: 12/30/2005 6:31:13 AM EDT

I'm trying to help out my brother-in-law. He has an older HP computer that had a catastrophic hard drive failure (at least that's the way he tells it

). He went and bought a new hard drive but finally determined that he cannot install it. I have no idea what was wrong witht he old one or where it went.

He dropped off the computer with the new drive physically installed, but no other work done. I formatted the nw drive and went to go reinstall his copy of Win98 (I know, I know--but work with me here) and cannot get his CD-ROM drive to read the disk.

I have never had this problem before even on ancient 486 machines.

Suggestions?

Posted: 12/30/2005 8:39:34 AM EDT

[#1]

Make sure that BIOS is set to check the CD-ROM at all. If it is, get him a new CD drive also. And a new OS while you're in the neighborhood.

ETA: Might also wanna check the cable and set the jumpers correctly if they're not set right.

Posted: 12/30/2005 10:09:55 AM EDT

[#2]

I was thinking about just rebuilding the whole thing, but I don't have that kind of scratch.

I've got the BIOS set to boot from the CD-ROM first, but it still doesn't read at all. I'm thinking that maybe it's a drive that needs specific drivers rather than the generic MSCDEX deal fromt he boot disk.

I'll take a CD-ROM drive off a spare unit and see if I can get that to work.

Posted: 12/30/2005 10:57:51 AM EDT

[#3]

how big is the harrddrive (the new one )

Posted: 12/30/2005 11:32:21 AM EDT

[#4]

Quoted:
how big is the harrddrive (the new one )

40 GB

Posted: 12/30/2005 11:53:11 AM EDT

[#5]

if its not reading the disc. the cdrom could be bad. the cd could be scratched. if its a burned cd the cdrom might not beable to read, due to the age of the cdrom drive.

+1 on checking the bios settings. make sure the cdrom is first

how did you format the Hd. a boot disk?

Posted: 12/30/2005 6:32:41 PM EDT

[#6]

Yes. I formatted the hard drive with a boot disk.

Posted: 12/30/2005 8:00:56 PM EDT

[#7]

It seems unlikely, but check to see if the CD-ROM is a non-IDE drive.

If the cable for the CD-ROM goes to a sound card or other expansion card, rather than one of the IDE headers on the motherboard, the CD-ROM probably can't be used to boot, even if the BIOS is set to boot CD first.

It's been years since I saw a computer set up that way, so I doubt it, but...worth asking.

Posted: 12/31/2005 7:26:51 PM EDT

[#8]

I plugged in an old 52x CDROM and got he Win98 OS installed. When I reinstalled the old Phillips CD/RW/DVD combo drive the system "saw" it but it wasn't accessible. I'm going try downloading an updated driver and if that doesn't work he can get a new drive.

Thanks all, and Happy New Year.

Posted: 1/1/2006 11:15:53 AM EDT

[#9]

98's not a bad OS, and on an older system is a better choice than XP due to xp needing more resources

Posted: 1/1/2006 1:38:50 PM EDT

[#10]

Quoted:
98's not a bad OS, and on an older system is a better choice than XP due to xp needing more resources

Yup! This rig is only sporting 256MB of RAM. I'm going to suggest he acquire at least another 512MB stick.

This unit is used for general web stuff and homework. The wife's recent vintage laptop gets most of the use and his middle son brings home his tablet PC from school.

Posted: 1/2/2006 8:32:23 PM EDT

[#11]

Quoted:
I'm trying to help out my brother-in-law. He has an older HP computer that had a catastrophic hard drive failure (at least that's the way he tells it ). He went and bought a new hard drive but finally determined that he cannot install it. I have no idea what was wrong witht he old one or where it went.

He dropped off the computer with the new drive physically installed, but no other work done. I formatted the nw drive and went to go reinstall his copy of Win98 (I know, I know--but work with me here) and cannot get his CD-ROM drive to read the disk.

I have never had this problem before even on ancient 486 machines.

Suggestions?

Are you trying to boot of the Win98 cd?

I don't think MS ever shipped win98 with a bootable setup. (Unlike the NT family

)

Bust out the floppy drive, or use nero to make a bootable cd, formant the HD and setup the hard drive to boot up and load dos level cdrom drivers to read/run the dos based windows98 setup on the cd.

Posted: 1/2/2006 9:39:52 PM EDT

[#12]

My Win98SE OEM CD is bootable.

Posted: 1/2/2006 9:54:55 PM EDT

[#13]

You say 40GB hard drive:

What vintage is the motherboard?

I had a Pentium 133 that I just barely got to read an 11GB drive (I had updated the BIOS and everything)

Posted: 1/2/2006 10:36:56 PM EDT

[#14]

Quoted:
My Win98SE OEM CD is bootable.

Maybe, but he did not say win98se.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Thrilling Days of Yesteryear...Win98 Rebuild

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