installing Win98

I am reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling Win 98 SE. I get through teh reformatting and everything. And when it is done it goes to DOS mode and just has a C:\ prompt. I cannot start loading from the CD and copying the files onto teh C drive. I have restarted with the boot disk and used CD-ROM support. Does anyone know where I go from here? I appreciate any help. Thank you.

 

After formatting reboot with your boot floppy and the Windows Cd in the drive. If its a proper MS boot disk it will give you the option of starting the setup of Windows from CD-ROM.

If its one that you created yourself wait til it gets to the A: prompt, then at the A:> prompt change to the CD drive (whatever that is: it will be D: if you only have one partition on your hard drive) by typing D:

That puts you in the root of the Windows CD. from there type setup and Windows installation will start.

If it comes up with "invalid drive specification" when you type D: it means that your boot floppy lacks CD-ROM drivers for DOS and you will have to manually add these to the floppy.

 

Hello
after using fdisk and format you need to reboot.
When you do have your windows start-up disk
in the floppy. This should allow you to use your
cd-rom. Go to cd-rom drive (usually one letter more
than you are used to. ( if it was d drive, it will be
e drive). ( to go to drive at the prompt use:
"e:" (no quotes) and press enter, that's the letter for your cd-rom
followed by a colon.
Put your win98 cd in and enter:
"setup" (again no quotes) and press enter.
should go right into the install program.

 

You may or may not be getting CDRom support with the boot diskette. There are a few CDRom drives where the Windows boot diskette isn't able to provide you with support. In that case you either need to load the real mode CDRom drivers or use something like the freeware program, CDGod, to create a boot diskette. The easiest way to explain this is ......

Boot to your W98 boot diskette. You should see a three option menu appear on the screen. Select the option for "Start with CDRom Support". Then as it's attempting to give you CDRom support, somewhere on the screen at the very end, it tells you what drive letter it has temporarily assigned to the CDRom drive if it was able to provide CDRom support. It will look something like this, "Drive X =MSCD001", where "X" is the drive letter that's been temporarily assigned to your CDRom drive for the install. If you don't see that phrase on the screen then you didn't get CD Rom support. Assuming you did see that phrase on the screen, insert your Windows CD and type the following at the a:\> prompt. Replace the letter "X" with the driver letter that the boot diskette assigned to your CDRom drive.

X:\setup