View Full Version : Dell laptop has bad sectors
diana61
October 20th, 2003, 02:30 AM
Just wondering if there is any posssible way to reload windows 95 into a dell laptop without cd rom drive, also has bad sectors on HDD, I have tried several times with bootdisk but it keeps saying if I dont have 32 mg of ram wont setup . Any help much apprieciated.
jerry4dos
October 20th, 2003, 07:45 AM
Hi diana61:
Have you tried booting with a bootdisk, then running the (DOS) SCANDISK that comes with the bootdisk? It can mark the bad sectors on the hard drive.
You can "force" WIN95 to install without conducting a memory check by using the "/im" switch ("SETUP /im").
Here are several ideas for installing WIN95 on machines without a CDROM drive:
http://discussions.virtualdr.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=146730#post708993
Good luck.
Jerry
diana61
October 21st, 2003, 03:30 PM
New to computers what do you mean with setup / im switch is this something you just type?
jdc2000
October 21st, 2003, 08:04 PM
Yes, instead of typing:
SETUP
use the following instead
SETUP /IM
(no space between the slash and the IM)
diana61
October 22nd, 2003, 01:00 PM
Well looked like it would work then got this error message: This version of microsoft scandisk will work only with ms-dos versions 5.0 and later.
setup found a compressed volume or a disk-cache utility on your computer. Quit setup and check your compressed volume with your disk compression software or remove the disk -cache utility. Then run setup again. Any idea how to remove this utility?
jerry4dos
October 23rd, 2003, 04:41 AM
Hi diana61:
Microsoft's disk compression schemes have caused a lot of people headaches over the years. Once M$ even released a DOS version without the compression utility that was used in the previous release. The following release contained an even different type of compression. As a result of all the confusion and problems, I have stayed away from all the compression schemes, and do not put that feature on any of the OS's I install.
That said, if you've got a compressed drive, and you want to SAVE the data on that drive, you've got to use the compression utility that was used to make it (if you can even figure out which one it was).
If you DON'T need any of the data, you can probably kill the partition with the compressed data with FDISK, then re-partition and re-format that partition before re-installing your OS.
WARNING: FDISK IS DANGEROUS. If you don't know what you're doing, don't mess with it. Get a knowledgeable friend to help you. If you still want to mess around with FDISK on your own, this site will probably be of help:
http://fdisk.radified.com/
Good luck.
Jerry