Solved: reinstalling ME

[dwaynea515]

I am trying to reinstall wME ona compaq presario desktop. I have already fdisked and when I try to boot with the os disk it tells me "operating system not found" when I boot with a ME startup disk it tells me "remove disks and cleck any buton to resume" when I start with w98 startup disk i cant format because "this program cannot be run in dos" but I cant get the ME disk to do anything. I dont know what else to try. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

 

[Wolfeymole]

After you fdisked it with the ME boot floppy did you format the drive dwayne?
Wolfey

 

[dwaynea515]

I cant, when I type Format, oor Formatc or format C or FormatC /s, I get the message Program cannot be run in Dos

 

[Bob Cerelli]

You need to boot with a DOS floppy and then format the drive (format c. You also don't need to put the /s in since when you reinstall the operating system, the boot files will be replaced anyway.

 

[dwaynea515]

I went to bootdisk.com and downloaded a w98 and a wME dos boot disk. Both got the same message. " remove disks or other media, press any key to restart"

 

[Bob Cerelli]

Are you sure the computer is booting to the floppy before the hard drive?

 

[dwaynea515]

Boot order,first CD Rom, second, Floppy, third, Hard Drive

 

[inane5]

The way I deal with ME computers is I rename the windows folder to "windows1" and put in a working "windows" folder. The reason I do that is becuase ME sucks big time, and repairing it almost never works. Unless you want to reformat it to factory settings, this is the next best thing.

Oh, and since you have a compaq presario, don't bother ghosting an image of windows onto your harddrive and expecting it to work. Compaq Presarios also suck big time. If you want to reinstall windows, you need to do it step by step through the CD.

Just keep that in mind.

 

[dwaynea515]

Thank you inane5 for your input, if you will start reading from my first post you will see that this is exactly what I am trying to do. Although I tend to agree with your opinion on wME and Compaq presarios this is not my computer and I really have a hard time telling my customers that their equipment is junk. I instead try to solve the problems and fix it the best way I can. But again thank you for your opinion, it was a big help

 

[inane5]

Ouch, that was harsh.

What I meant to say was that the compaq motherboards are picky so creating partitions or laying fresh images usually are a big waste of time. You end up just doing what you tried to avoid in the first place.

No partitions. Just ghost their drive, and reformat it - use another computer to do this if you have to. Then run the windows ME setup and put their files and drivers back.

And like I said, the only shortcut I've found for this in my experience is renaming the windows directory and putting a working windows directory in.

I just want to help.

Make sure you install the critical updates once it's all taken care of.

 

[Bob Cerelli]

If you want to have a clean install, without formatting, you need to rename more than the Windows folder. You also need to rename the "Program Files" directory as well.

 

[JSntgRvr]

Boot Disk?

http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml

How to install Windows ME:

http://www.duxcw.com/digest/Howto/software/windows/winme/install/inst.html

 

[Bob Cerelli]

I have a section with instructions for creating a boot disk at:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/floppies.htm

There is also the generic one which you can download and at:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/software/win98_img.exe

Just insert and floppy and run the program after you download it. This will automatically format, copy the files to the floppy disk.

There are a lot of the DOS utilities there that don't normally get added when you make one from Win98. For example Diskcopy, Doskey, Format, More, Move, Sys, Edit, Chkdsk, Deltree, Extract, Updated Fdisk, Attrib, Label, Mem, Scandisk, Scanreg, Smartdrv and Xcopy.

Not only are there more utilities on there but it starts much faster since it doesn't have to create the RAM disk and then expand the cab file from the floppy to that RAM disk.

It automatically loads with support for a generic CD ROM and assigns it the drive letter of X:

There is also a CD ROM boot image you can download at:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/software/win_boot.iso

In addition to all the other DOS utilities, the CD version also has:
DELPART - For deleting DOS and NTFS partitions. Can delete extended NTFS partitions.
FDISK121 - FDISK with additional options - See the documentation, and
READNTFS - Read and Copy files on a NTFS partition.

The CD image needs to be burned using a program that recognized ISO images.

=================

Information on how to use FDISK can be found at:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/fdisk.htm

Topics covered are:
Overview and Getting Started
Partitioning a New Drive - Single Large Partition
Partitioning a New Drive - Multiple Partitions
Deleting a Single Partition
Deleting Multiple Partitions
Deleting a NTFS Partition
Fixing the Master Boot Record

==================

Information on a variety of ways to install (or re-install Win9x) can be found at:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/win9x_install.htm

Topics covered are:
Overview
FDISK and/or FORMAT
First Time Install
Simple Re-Install - (Over Existing Installation)
Clean Installation or Upgrade - (Keeping Windows & Program Files Directories)
New Installation - (Removing Original Files without a Format)

 

[dwaynea515]

inane5, I guess I owe you an apology, I didnt mean to be harsh but this thing is driving me crazy. I am also working on 2 NT workstations and a w2000 computer all full of virus" at the same time. I guess I am getting a little jumpy. sorry about being rude and thanks for the input. I have already fdisked the HD and am now trying to format and install. I have deleted all partitions and recreated one partition. I have activated it. This is as far as I have been able to go.

 

[Bob Cerelli]

After partitioning and rebooting from the floppy to an A: prompt, run "FORMAT C:" - no quotes.