Installing Windows 95 on Dell Optiplex GX1

[jeffm]

I am trying to install windows 95 on a dell desktop. It has Phoenix bios Rev A06 I believe. I have made a Windows 95 boot disk from bootdisk.com, formatted the hard drive as format c: /s and have the cdrom drive as the first bootable device. When I start up the machine I get a brief look at a Windows 95 logo, but then the machine takes me to the A prompt.

It doesn't seem like the machine is seeing the CDROM. The hard drive is partitioned into C, D, and E. I can't see an F or G. I'm pulling my hair out. Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong?

[blakey81]

Hi,

You could have a look to see if the CD ROM is installed correct by opening your machine to check all leads are connected, also try with out booting from your CD ROM

Try this: when you get the A promt type Xsetup (Where X is your CD ROM drive)

Then you should have windows go through Scandisk, then exit this and continue through the setup (This is what I dont when I reformatted my hard drive to reinstall windows ME, it should be the same)

Hope this helps

[jeffm]

The cdrom is installed correctly. If I put my Windows 2000 software cd in it will install windows 2000 without any difficulty. However, I don't have enough licenses for W2K to install it on this machine.
Thanks!

[blakey81]

It could be your Windows 95 CD, Where did you get it from? is it a proper CD brought from a shop?

[jeffm]

Yes it is a completely legal copy. However I have fixed the problem. Further reading on another site indicated that W95 had a problem with cdrom drivers and that a person could use the Windows 98 startup disk. Guess what, it worked. I'm installed now. Thanks very much for your posts,