One of my friends came back to the dorms with a old laptop that he just got from his family. Its a Compaq Armada 1590DMT, old yes.. albe to run windows 95.. it should.
The problem is at the moment it has Red hat installed, and is passworded. No one in his family remebers the password thus trying to reinstall an OS.(This time using windows)
Now this is the problem. If I remember right you need to have a boot flopy to be able to run the windows CD... And I dont have the ones that came with the CD. I have tried making a general floopy to boot a cd and as far as that got was just to tell me what was in the cd drive, but not run it. The other times I have tried I get an error saying to remove all media.
If anyone knows how I could whipe the drive and install windows on this lap top please help.
First, you need to wipe the hard drive clean. (If Fdisk does not work for this, you'll have to use a linux boot CD or 3rd party software)
1) Insert a boot floppy that includes fdisk, format, and CD support
2) Power on
3) At the a:\ prompt type"fdisk"
4) If prompted, enable large disk support
5) Delete primary partition. (I think Fdisk can do this)
6) Create Primary DOS partition and set it to active
Then, you'll need to format:
1) reboot
2) type "format c:/s"
3) type "y" for yes I'm sure
4) wait
5) Give it a name
6) Reboot
Now, you'll need to install 95
1) type "d:"
2) type "setup" (if this dosen't work type "dir" and see what is available)
3) this should allow you to set up 95 (I'm assuming you know how to do that)
If fdisk cannot preform the functions you need it to, then use 3rd party software such as "kill it"
http://killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm
Alternitavely, re-install redhat! @ocalhoun
First off I would like to thank you. But I do have some questions that I just dont know much about.
| Quote: |
| 1) Insert a boot floppy that includes fdisk, format, and CD support |
Fdisk-does this work? Or something else? http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/
format- I dont have a clue -_-
cd support- just find a cd driver thats that old im guessing?
sorry for being really "slow" about this.
@SoftStag
Those are some of the disks I tried. If I remmeber right only one of them showed me that I had something in the drive. But thanks, I had forgoten about that site. | Saber wrote: |
@ocalhoun
First off I would like to thank you. But I do have some questions that I just dont know much about.
| Quote: | | 1) Insert a boot floppy that includes fdisk, format, and CD support |
Fdisk-does this work? Or something else? http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/
format- I dont have a clue -_-
cd support- just find a cd driver thats that old im guessing?
sorry for being really "slow" about this.
@SoftStag
Those are some of the disks I tried. If I remmeber right only one of them showed me that I had something in the drive. But thanks, I had forgoten about that site. |
One of the ones suggested by SoftStag should suffice:
I would suggest either one of the 95 boot disks or dos 6.x disks offered for download there.
You shouldn't have to worry about using freedos, even microsoft is lenient enough to not prosecute you for copying DOS.
Freedos is really just for those who hate closed-source software.one of my questions is still, is there something that I need for format or the cd drive? ? or is that in the boot files?
| Saber wrote: |
| one of my questions is still, is there something that I need for format or the cd drive? ? or is that in the boot files? |
It should (from what I gather) be included in those downloads.You must use Fdisk to remove the Linux partitions, and create a FAT partition, then format the partition you created. You can then install Windows 95.
Ok, I did fdisk, and then rebooted. then I typed "format c:/s" I get a message "incalid drive specification. "
"format c:/s" says "parameter format not correct - C:\s"
"format c:\" says "parameter format not correct - C:\"
and "format c:/" says "invalid switch - /"
-_- soooo now im lost again, looking for guidence.
thanks again for spending the time helping me.
did you create the primary DOS partition?
yes, and for some reason now it works.
Thanks again for your step by step help.
-_- sorry I guess I spoke too soon. When I try to get to the cd it give me "invalid drive specification" so close yet so far.
Did the boot disk appear to load any CD-rom drivers?
It should say something about it during boot up.
"cr-rom device driver for ied(four channels supporter)
driver version:v340"
but still "invalid drive specification" =\
go to the website of the company that built your laptop and get a cd-rom driver from them.
The real question here is, why are you installing Windows 95 on a labtop that has RedHat on it? That's like breaking a perfectly good arm... 
if you had read what I said, one no one remembers the password so it needs to be reinstalled and such.. and sadly they dont like redhat. -_-
Oh well I got it to work now, for some reason the cd drive was drive r:. duno... thanks for all the help.
yeah...use win 95 SE 
that shall work...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................or......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 
Windows 98 that is better..................................................................................................ok im hope i could help ya! 
...............CIAAA 
you mean win 95 os2.....SE is windows 98
You can create a boot disk from a system running Win98 or possibly
ME.
You can also download them from the net, do a search in google etc.
If not I could attach a copy if I can find it!
Once you have the boot disk:
Boot from floppy
Start with CD support (require win 98 start disk)
Format hard drive: format c:
Create folder on hard drive:
mkdir c:\win95
go to CD drive ie. d
copy "*.*" c:\win95\
This will copy all the setup files to the hard drive, by running setup from c:\win95 it will never ask to insert the Win95 cd (famous last words), and will install faster.
If the hard drive is too small then run setup from the cd.
type the following
cd c:\win95
setup
It would be an idea to have a look on the laptop manufacturers web site
for any drivers etc. Alternatively look on www.driversguide.com.
Hope this works, let me know if it doesn't
Pete Um.. it was already fixed. BTW it's Win95 OSR2
Now, good luck finding a copy of IE5.5 SP2, the latest version for Win95. I really love Windows 95 because it doesn't support Firefox. Great way to dismiss the "DONT USE IE" whiners
Remember to use FAT partition and not NTFS since windows 95 doesn't support NTFS.
And you can still use Red Hat without knowing the password. Try booting in a different run level, may be run level 0.
Abhinav Shah[/url] | abhinav_shah wrote: |
| Remember to use FAT partition and not NTFS since windows 95 doesn't support NTFS. |
I fail to see how he would create a NTFS partition with FDISK.... | abhinav_shah wrote: |
Remember to use FAT partition and not NTFS since windows 95 doesn't support NTFS.
And you can still use Red Hat without knowing the password. Try booting in a different run level, may be run level 0.
Abhinav Shah[/url] |
Don't know about your linux, but on mine runlevel 0 is shutdown.
(runlevel 6 is restart) | Quote: |
| Ok, I dont even know why people are posting here anymore. The problem has been solved for a long time now. I feel like people dont read dates anymore or read anything but the first and last post(sometimes). Anyways, Im quoting this because this is just a rant, and I shouldnt get points for this. |
