[Bill Ding]

Hello! I just replaced the hard drive on my UL486 computer.I formated the drive and installed Ms-dos 5.and windows 3.1 with the original disks, I had from day 1. When I reboot the computer it locks up before windows loads.I checked the config.sys and the autoexec.bat and the settings are correct. The last item in the autoexec.bat is WIN... I checked the C: drive directory to see if windows was loaded and it is. I checked to see if dos was loaded.it is. Dos ver is 5.0
I can boot with boot disk ,but still it won't open windows. Can anybody help????? ty Bill Ding

Do you know how to use Edlin (DOS line editor) or do you have some way to edit your text (bat) files ? Can you edit your autoexec.bat to make the windows start command a remark (ie. - Rem WIN) ? Will your machine now boot from the HD and sit at the DOS prompt ? If yes, the problem is with Windows initialization. If no, the problem may be a DOS hardware driver. Don't even think about Windows until you can boot to DOS.

***There was no plug-n-play back then... you had to install hardware drivers using the disk that came with the hardware. My best guess is that you have some piece of hardware in your machine that does not have a driver. You could attempt to unplug anything that is not critical (network card, CDR, etc.) if you can determine anything in "this" category.

[Bill Ding]

HI Slithy Tove! I can use MS-dos editor to edit. It seems to me my problem is that when I get to the point where ms-dos starts to load the computer just freezes up. I inseted the REM WIN into the second line of autoexec. that didn't help. do you have anymore suggestions. I know windows is loaded in to C: drive as is DOS.

[MacFromOK]

_______________________________________________

What drive did you put in the computer?
Did you run FDISK to create a bootable
partition?

I don't think DOS 5 supports large drives
(over 512 MB), but a large one should work
if you partition it into smaller ones with FDISK.
If it's over a 10 gig drive though, ya may have
problems...

Cheers, Mac

Originally posted by Bill Ding:
I inseted the REM WIN into the second line of autoexec. that didn't help

I'm not sure I understand this. Did you add the line or edit/change the "WIN" line that was already there ? (Adding a "REM" line will do nothing - changing a command to a remark effectively deletes the command)

Also, I just assumed you replaced the HD with the same thing. If you didn't... Mac (above) may have your answer (or at least the first one).

If you are installining DOS and Windows from the ol' PILE of diskettes you don't want to do this several times per day so, let's take this slowly, in the right order, and we should be able to get the problems solved.

Forgive me for re-stating what Mac has already said, but here's one crack at the right order...
1) If you have a drive larger than 512Mb run Fdisk; wipe/delete all the partitions; create the first (primary DOS) partition no larger than 500Mb; make sure it's "active".
2) From the DOS prompt type...
format c: /s ....hit enter, let the format run
3) Attempt to boot from the HD - it should boot to a DOS prompt at this point. If it doesn't... go no further. We'll have to get this far before going to the next step.

[Bill Ding]

I added the line,in autoexec ,right @ECHO.OFF. I don't know if you got my last message. It showed me an error

I did not receive any message. I think we may still be not quite communicating... In your first post you said the last item in your autoexec.bat is "WIN". That is the command to automatically start Windows when you boot. I wanted you to remove the command. Instead of deleting the entire line it is easier to make the line a "remark" by adding "REM " in front of "WIN" so that the line looks like...
REM WIN (it's NOT case sensitive)

But, this may not matter anyway if you read my previous post. However, if you do load Windows again the installation will replace the DOS autoexec.bat with a "Windows" one that has the WIN command in it. Again, I would remark out the WIN command until DOS is booting correctly. Then, you manually start Windows when you're ready (type WIN at the DOS prompt). When you have BOTH DOS and Windows running properly you can go back into autoexec.bat and UNremark the WIN command.

First things first... what is your response to Mac's post regarding the size of the newer hard-disk ?

[Lurker1]

Yes it could be a hard drive size issue or on an older system like this a bios limitation. More information for Bill Ding on these limitations if you are interrested in reading about them.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeOlder-c.html

I think dos 6 let you access hard drives up to 2 gig. You don't have a copy of that around do you?