Get Your Best Man For This One!

[John Allen]

I have an old Packard bell.I had it updated in 1996.Hard drive, Cdrom, Video,sound, and tower cabinet. They installed Win98, over Win95 that was installed by me over the original Packard Bell software. There are no numbers on the cabinet . So I have no model#,serial# for the computer.

Heres what i have got . Packard bell restore diskette, PBMMMCD09 ver.1.0614
and multi media master cd, #170200 rev.3

My problem is I formatted the hard drive. Reparitioned the primary. And started loading Win98SE. Win98 se is an upgrade so it said I must have a previous version of windows on my computer before I can load win98.

I have a copy of Win95(cd) and a boot disk. But I believe msdos 7.0 is missing some files so win95 won't load either. I want Win98.
Boy do I need help. I would like to format hard drive and start over , How?

[zipulrich]

Purchase a Win98 full version CD. Take a look around eBay or the like, for cheap prices.

And some of our 'best men' are women. :)

[GretaP]

Have you tried doing a full install using the WIN98SE upgrade CD (without installing WIN95 first)? If not, give it a try, and when it asks for proof of a previous operating system, insert the WIN95 install CD and follow any further prompts. Most, if not all, upgrade install CDs will work that way, so you wouldn't need to completely install the previous operating system before upgrading to the "new" operating system.

[Spider]

GretaP is right, follow her instructions she is the "best man" for the job. :D

[John Allen]

Sorry ! Ladies I didn't think. But an't that what men but best? Don't think!

Anyway, I repartitioned and formatted hard drive. Then started installing win98 with the 98 startup disk and cd. Things were going great . I used the win95 cd as proof like you said and it worked. Although it did hang up a couple times and I had to start over. But when I got to the part where it copies the files from the cd it stopped. I turned it off and rebooted a few times. Now I'm getting an error message = CDR101 : Not ready reading drive E: Abort,Retry,Fail?
And I'm stuck. I've tried for hours to get it going but no good.

I'm wondering if the cdrom motor has quit? Before it quit working all together I could hear it trying to turn. Kinda like a scratching noise. Or that might be in my head?

I have questions? Is my dos program separate from win98. Is this something I
have to load on it's own?
When I formatt does this clear out msdos? I remember getting a message that
said I was trying to load the wronge Dos version. Or that windows will not work with this Dos version. I can't remember what I was doing. I think I was trying to use the win 95 startup disk.

How can I find out which dos version is in my machine and which version I need to go with my win98?
Where can I download a copy of msdos? Hopefully for Free.
Is there a way to test cdrom to see if the motor is still working?
What now LADIES and gentelmen?

Hey, I remember I downloaded a copy I made of ms-dos 6.2 off the old packard bell cd I had . Then I tried to install it. Is this a problem?

GretaP can you answer these questions ? I be waiting!
Thanks for everyones help - John

[GretaP]

Hi John Allen,
It sounds to me like your CDROM has gone south on you.......either that or it needs a really good cleaning. I have had that same thing happen to me (CDROM went south at the beginning of Windows setup) and had to replace the CDROM drive in order to run setup again. Give the CDROM drive a good cleaning and if that doesn't work, if possible, swap the CDROM drive with one this is known to be working in order to get Windows installed........either that or purchase a new drive ASAP to get Windows installed.

As for your DOS questions, for Windows 3.1, 3.11 and NT, you had to load DOS first (I believe version 6.22) before installing Windows. With the Windows 95 on up (which contain versions 7.x ) you don't have to load DOS first before installing Windows. If you formatted and transferred system files (format c: /s) using, say, Windows 95 startup disk and then try to load a different version of Windows (Windows 98, for example), you would probably get that incorrect DOS version message.

When you're installing Windows version 95 on up, it's best to NOT use the /s switch when formatting. As Windows is installing, it will load the system files.