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drive letters
Name: ramjjat Date: December 21, 2000 at 13:42:40 Pacific
Comment:
I just bought a celeron 700mhz, Houston motherboard computer with a 20gb drive. Anyway, I bought it with nothing installed. I can boot to a disk (I have win95A and Win98SE boot disks available), but When I type "d:" or "c:" into the prompt, it says "invalid drive specification". BIOS detected both drives, so how do I assign the drive's letters in DOS??
Name: DoOMsdAY Date: December 21, 2000 at 13:53:21 Pacific
Reply:
You will have to create and format partitions on whatever hard drives you have installed in this machine. What is your final wish for an operating system to run on it? If it's 9x or NT or some Windows flavor, you might try setting to BIOS to boot CDs and insert your installation disc. This'll save a lot of work on your end. If you want DOS, insert disk 1 from that set and boot, then let it do its thing. Essentially, whatever you wish to install on there will probably do the partitioning and formatting work for you if you do it right. If you just want to create partitions for the heck of it, boot with one of your disks and type the following after reaching the A:\ prompt...
Type "fdisk [Enter]"
Press "y" for large disk support if prompted.
Hit "1" to create a primary partition.
Press "y" to create it full size and set it active.
[Esc] back out to the DOS prompt and Ctrl+Alt+Del as instructed to reboot.
Once back at the A:\ prompt, type "format c: /u /s [Enter]"
Hit "y" when prompted to begin the format.
Hit [Enter] when asked for a disk label.
Reboot once more without the boot disk and you should arrive at a C:\ prompt.
I feel like I left a step out of there as far as primary partition menus in fdisk, but it should be pretty straighforward. Hope that helps. Also, if you tell us what operating system you wish to load we could very easily tell you where to go from here.
Right now I have Win95 to work with. I'm about to attempt the Fdisk thing, so I'll report back in a few minutes. How do I assign the CD-rom a letter?
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Response Number 3
Name: DoOMsdAY Date: December 21, 2000 at 18:29:24 Pacific
Reply:
The easiest way (if you can't boot from the CD-ROM) is to download a pre-made boot disk from www.bootdisk.com. Get a 98 boot disk, install that to a disk (not copy) and then boot with it. It'll have fdisk and format and also will support the CD-ROM drive. If you do that, though, do not use the /s switch on format since you're gonna be installing 95, not 98. Also, if you have OSR1 of 95, do not allow large disk support (hit "n" when prompted"). (OSR1 is the first release that came out all the way at the beginning of 95. It does not support partitions larger than 2048 MB.) Without the /s switch, though, you will not be able to boot without a boot disk until after you install 95. It's no big matter, but just so you know. All you really need to do is boot with the 98 boot disk, choose the menu option for command prompt with CD-ROM support, and then from the A:\ prompt type [CD-ROM Drive Letter]:\setup. You will see what letter the CD-ROM occupies during the bootup of the boot disk as mscdex will tell you. I'm rambling again...must be bed time. :)
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Response Number 4
Name: ramjjat Date: December 21, 2000 at 19:09:17 Pacific
Reply:
Hey, everything worked great. Thank you very much for your help.
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Response Number 5
Name: DoOMsdAY Date: December 21, 2000 at 20:30:12 Pacific
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