Wiping Hard Drive and Reinstalling 95

maclost · #1 October 1st, 2004, 04:19 AM

Can someone tell me what is the best way to wipe a hard drive and reinstall win 95 on a IBM (Verryy old bugger). I help the teachers at my school w/ problems on their computers. These are donated computers from friends or students so I don't have win 95 software. I do have win 98 but this computer does not have enough memory for it. So I need to get my hands on a cd or boot disk. The teacher would like to wipe it to just have it for games and word processing. I have tried to get a boot and nuke disk but I CAN NOT GET IT TO DOWNLOAD CORRECTLY.

So I hope there is another way.

Thanks for the help.

**smurfy** · #2 October 1st, 2004, 04:57 AM

Unfortunately you are not going to get very far without a boot disk AND a Windows installation CD-Rom.

Potentially, the Win95 setup files could already be on the hard-drive (look for a folder like C:/Windows/Options/Cabs or C:/Win95

If they are there, we can do it all with a bootdisk and a few (dangerous) DOS commands.

maclost · #3 October 1st, 2004, 07:00 AM

Thanks Smurfy for the info. I do have a win 98 bootdisk and win 98 CD. Does this help me any? You know I tryed to load the win 98 and it told me not enough memory so could not install. BUT after that the computer would only startup and show me A:\. Whats up with that? It used startup just fine, just a alot of stuff on it and a little slow. What should I do?

Thank You

**smurfy** · #4 October 1st, 2004, 07:28 AM

Quote:

BUT after that the computer would only startup and show me A:\. Whats up with that

Still has the Win98 Boot floppy in the drive?

from the A:\ prompt type
c: [enter]
dir [enter]

See anything?
Type
cd windows [enter]
dir [enter]
Anything there?

maclost · #5 October 1st, 2004, 05:15 PM

Smrfy, no it does not have the boot disk in it. It is a black screen and I believe the HD info and then A:\.

Thanks

**smurfy** · #6 October 2nd, 2004, 02:14 AM

So can you enter any commands at the A:\ prompt or is it static?

Any difference if you DO use the Win98 boot floppy?

maclost · #7 October 3rd, 2004, 12:45 AM

You know it did have a disk in it after all. I'm working on these computers at school and posting at home so back and forth back and forth. I had made a 95 boot disk from the computer and that was in there.

ANYWAY I was able to get the computer to do a format on the C drive but now I can't load wins 95 back on. OH!!BTW I found a win 95 boot disk and a win 95 CD but it is Windos 95 & Plus w/ USB support CD. What does & Plus mean?
So anyway when I start up the computer this is what I get (this is w/o the boot disk or the CD.

First it flashes windows 95 screen for a split second:

Then it gives me info on the Hard Drive (like company and other things)

Then saids:

STARTING WINDOWS 95

MICROSOFT (R) WINDOWS 95

(C) COPYRIGHT MICROSOFT CORP 1981-1995

So that's about it what should I do from here?

If I boot from the win 95 boot disk all I get is the A:\> prompt. I can change it to the C:\ put I do not know what to do then.

tetonbob · #8 October 3rd, 2004, 02:53 AM

As Smurfy said in Post #4:

When you change it to C: type DIR and hit Enter. Anything there?

Type
cd windows [enter]
dir [enter]
Anything there?

Report back with your findings.

**smurfy** · #9 October 3rd, 2004, 04:34 AM

maclost - did you actually do a format of C: drive as indicated in your last post?

Now that you have a Win95 CD (Plus is a bunch of add-ons - multimedia, desktop themes etc) what we need is a bootdisk that is going to let you see teh CDrom in DOS. A Win95 disk won't do it, so get a Win98 Bootdisk.
Once you have that, the tutorials section here at CTH has step by step instructions on reinstalling Windows.

maclost · #10 October 3rd, 2004, 07:53 PM

Well Smurfy thats what it said it was doing and it ran through the % up 100% complete. But I'm still not sure why when the computer starts it flashes WINDOWS 95 for that split second.

So anyway I do have a (from Microsoft) original win 98 boot disk.

So tomorrow I'll try it.

Thank You

pinman · #11 October 4th, 2004, 05:22 AM

Theres only 1 sollution,
You need to install Dos first.Disk 1 has fdisk and Format on it.
Then you will need your cdrom driver installation cd.

****EDIT BY smurfy ****
PLEASE IGNORE THIS POST
****EDIT BY smurfy ****

maclost · #12 October 5th, 2004, 07:00 AM

Well guys and gals today I stuck in the win 95 boot disk and did fdisk and did the partition and reformat and it seem to work. So tomorrow I shall attempt to install win 95 from CD. Any suggestion before then on what to do and not to do would be lovely.

Thank You

**smurfy** · #13 October 5th, 2004, 11:51 AM

maclost, no, all I can say is follow the Tutorial and if you get stuck, come back and post in this thread and we'll do our best to help you out.

maclost · #14 October 6th, 2004, 04:22 AM

Well I did it I was able to reinstall win 95. All is well on that computer.

BUT NOW...I was trying to do this on another computer for the teacher and it did not work. This computer has win 98 installed on it. I put in a win 98 boot disk (original) and it will not format it. I did the partitions and then can't get to the c drive to format. Do I need a win 98 startup disk not the boot disk? It was a startup disk I used on the other computer.

Thanks

pinman · #15 October 6th, 2004, 06:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maclost

Well I did it I was able to reinstall win 95. All is well on that computer.

BUT NOW...I was trying to do this on another computer for the teacher and it did not work. This computer has win 98 installed on it. I put in a win 98 boot disk (original) and it will not format it. I did the partitions and then can't get to the c drive to format. Do I need a win 98 startup disk not the boot disk? It was a startup disk I used on the other computer.

Thanks

You must supply more about the mbd,cpu etc.Isn't it obvious you need "more memory"? a boot disk only works with what you have.
Who's teaching who ?
Stop installing W95 and figure out 98.Do you have a W98 cd ?