Windows 95 won't even start!!

Angela5085 · #1 September 9th, 2004, 09:59 AM

I have 2 computers and I recently decided to try and fix the problem with my win/95 computer. Everytime I turn it on and it goes through the search for disks and such at the black screens and after i see the colorized screen for Windows 95(or starting windows95 screen) it goes back to the black screen and says
c:\
i've tried typing in scandisk,regeidt,windows setup,startup, setup and nothing seems to work or fix the problem.I'm not sure what to do I don't know much about computers when they're like this.The last time I used this computer I remember I was trying to clean up space and might have deleted something important but unknown to me as such. I don't have a bootdisk or the original disk anymore. Is there anything I can do to save this computer?

tetonbob · #2 September 10th, 2004, 01:53 AM

Download a Win98 bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com Follow the instructions on how to - download it to a folder on a PC, then run the .exe program. It will ask you for a floppy disk at that point.

When you get to the A prompt, type C: then hit Enter
When you get to the C prompt type DIR then hit Enter

Are there any files/directories there?

If not, you will almost certainly need an OS install disk of some sort.

Angela5085 · #3 September 10th, 2004, 07:27 AM

thanks for the advice but the one problem with that is i can't even get into the computer. it's only goes so far as the very very begining where it shows the black background with the white word fonts. where you can change the time and simple stuff like that. you can't even use the mouse. it won't go any further then that then it'll do the command prompt. ( c:\ )

tetonbob · #4 September 10th, 2004, 02:32 PM

Right. But did you try my suggestion? Please do, and then report back.

A bootdisk takes over your PC and in effect becomes the Operating System. Right there during the black background with the white word fonts.

ogilby · #5 September 11th, 2004, 08:02 PM

common- it's 2004! no wonder Win 95 won't start- it's old!!!

just jokin- sorry don't have anything for 95!

Angela5085 · #6 September 16th, 2004, 10:12 AM

thanks for the advice i tried that but unfortunatly ever since i add another cd drive to my computer the floppy disk drive hasn't helped. But it seems like you idea would work. do you know of any place where i can find a cd disk of the win 98? and does it have to be win 98 can it be like windows xp or 2000?

**smurfy** · #7 September 16th, 2004, 01:34 PM

Angela.
Welcome to CyberTechHelp.

Your computer is 1/2 way through the boot process.
Let find out how far we can get it to go.
Boot normally. When you get to the C:/ prompt (after the Windows 95 "splash screen") try typing:
win [ENTER]

What happens?

If that doesn't work, we can try to get into Win95 in SAFE mode.
Immediately after the initial white-on-black screens, before you see the colour splash screen you should see a message "Starting Windows 95... in the white on black text. Press F8 key when you see that to enable the Windows boot options menu. Select Safe mode and see if it gets you to the safe mode Win95 desktop (warning - it will not look like it normally did when you booted to a working Windows 95 desktop).

Once we know how far you can get, we'll be able to assist in getting it to boot normally.

Message to ogilby:

Quote:

just jokin- sorry don't have anything for 95!

If you don't have anything constructive to add, refrain from posting at all.

Angela5085 · #8 September 23rd, 2004, 06:45 AM

ok so i tried your idea and tried starting it in safe mode. unfortunatly it once again did a C prompt. at that time I tried the win [enter] and it said bad command or file name. I typed it in nermerous times using caps and lower case spaces and no spaces and different {[}]. and it still asked for the C prompt. I also tried it in the start up one-at-a-time mode and once again it asked for a C prompt.

**smurfy** · #9 September 23rd, 2004, 07:13 AM

Ok, well I'm afraid we're not going to get much further towards getting Win95 running without a working floppy drive. If the CD drive works, sure you can try to install another operating system on it - without knowing details of the hardware involved I can generalise and say you'll probably struggle to get anything newer than Win98 to run properly. 2000 & XP have some pretty steep hardware requirements and ME is just a dog.

AmandaThornton · #10 October 21st, 2004, 02:44 PM

Ok, everything up to this point is the same trouble that I am having, except my computer will start to go into safe mode and then error messages start popping up and when I start clicking ok on them, the computer freezes up completely and I can not do anything from this point. This computer is a HP Pavilion xg833. It had windows ME when it first started acting up. I deleted quite a bit of stuff after it started acting up, and then windows wouldn't even come up at all. Well, my husband was convinced that the problem was the windows program so, he installed windows 95. So, here we are... Any suggestions?

BDP · #11 October 24th, 2004, 01:27 PM

can you tell us some of the error messages?