Formatting Old Laptop....

[JayBay]

Hi, Not sure if this is the correct forum, but lets hope so!

I sent this email to NEC a few weeks ago, and alas, not response Shocking at how many corporations like to ignore emails if it requires their assistance and or is about a warrenty question. Anyhow, I thought maybe some of you wonderfully skilled techs could help me, Thanks! Here is the email I sent NEC:

Hi,
I own a NEC 4050C laptop with Windows95 on it. I want to format the hard drive, and have a fresh install of Windows95.
I cannot currently run the Win95 setup.exe becuase of some conflicts.
The first error I get when attempting to run the EXE file off the Windows CD is this :

WINDOWS SETUP

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.
Click cancel to exit setup, Click continue if you've already done this.

I'm not sure what is causing this, and I don't know why or how a drive would be compressed.

If I click continue, I get another error message after the preparing for installation status bar reaches 100% and I view the EULA:

Error SU-0013

Setup could not create files on your startup drive and cannot set up Windows.
If you have HPFS or WindowsNT file system, you must create an MS-DOS boot partition. If you have LANtastic server or SuperStor compressionh, disable it before running setup. See setup.txt on Setup Disk 1 or the Windows CD-ROM.
Click OK to exit setup.

I get those errors wether I start the setup from inside Windows or I start it through MS-DOS. I've looked for formatting instructions but as the laptop has only one drive slot and can utilize one drive at a time, most procedures won't work. I found some instructions how to do it on a single drive laptop but the directions were not ver detailed, and because of the error messages I recieve their instructions also did not work.

Thanks for your time,
Jay Brooks

 

[Jedi_Master]

Howdy JayBay...

It sounds like the laptop has a "Save to disk" cache on the hard drive...

Try going here boot disk download the W95 boot disk, double click on the downloaded file and let it create a boot disk...

Boot the laptop with the boot disk, and use fdisk to delete all the partitions ( should be only 2, of there are more, donot delete them, report back here as to how many and the size of each ), then reboot and use fdisk to create a primary DOS partition, reboot then reformat, and install W95...

 

[JayBay]

Hi Jedi_Master! Thanks for your speedy reply.

I hate to be a burden, but could you explain a little clearer? I think of myself as knowledgeable about computers, but i've never needed to reformat before. I don't even know what fdisk is...thanks for your time, sorry I am a pain

 

[Jedi_Master]

Wel...

Create the boot disk from the link in my other post...


Then follow these instructions for fdisk...

http://www.myrosa.com/fdiskformat.html

 

[JayBay]

Thanks Jedi_Master, that link made things clearer.

I'm still hesitant to proceed though due to as my laptop has a swappable drive, floppy or CD, one at a time. I think i've tried a boot disk a while back, and it said something to the point that it could not find a CD drive, since the floppy was installed at the time.

 

[JayBay]

Bump

 

[john1]

the problem of one-at-a-time has been addressed before.
I'm not sure, but i think it involved putting the bootdisk
entries on to the hard drive instead, but i'm not sure.

See what others have to say ...

 

[doggard]

Sounds like you have windows drive space enabled on the drive which compresses the data much like a zip file you would need to use the application to decompress the drive before you can proceed.

Programs/Accessories/System tools/Drive space

 

[JayBay]

That utility says the drive is not compressed...

 

[doggard]

OK do you know if the system has overlay software installed within the master boot record?

 

[JayBay]

Overlay as in another OS? No, only Win95 as far as I know, if that's not what it means I don't know

I was thinking of installing Linux on it, now would that be the best route to go? Install linux and let it reformat, etc during installation, but leave a partition for Win95 if I choose to install it later?

 

[JayBay]

Sorry to bump again, just seems topics jump the the 2nd, 3rd pages rather quickly

 

[john1]

Ive had a little think.
From what i recall the problem of swapping Floppy and CD
with only one bay was dealt with by putting the relevant
sections of the CD onto the hard drive and not using the
CD for the installation.

If you have formatted the hard drive, then the files can
be copied over from CD to HD using dos and a dos driver
for the CD unit.

If you have not formatted the HD then maybe you could do
a re-install without formatting, which might be easier.

John

 

[JayBay]

Hi John, the errors described above prevent me from reinstalling 95 without formatting..

 

[john1]

Hi JayBay,
so you haven't formatted the hard drive then ... ?