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Hi to everyone.
I was wondering if someone could help me with my problem. I own a old laptop computer, an IBM Thinkpad model 760E, which has 64MB ram, 5.1GB disk, floppy unit, and two PCMCIA ports, where I usually use an ethernet adaptor and an external CD unit. I'm almost sure that the processor is a Pentium 1. This computer worked perfectly with any Operating System up to Windows 98SE, which is the one that suited it the best. The previous owner of this computer had the dumb idea of installating Windows 2000 Professional Edition (the last one)on this computer, which worked very slowly on it, wasn't compatible with most drivers and lasted ages to boot, literally. Generally between 30' to 1 hour. With this new OS the CD Drive Driver wouldn't install (Argosy CD 966 Model I), neither the modem/sound card (it's a 2 in 1, an mWave chip), the video card (Trident Video Accelerator 3000 I think) nor the IR devices. The last one I managed to use, but up to a very limited transfer rate, that would mean much slower than the normally slow speed of digital IR communications. And the video device worked with minimal functionality. The BIOS configuration had way better grafics than those that could be shown by Win 2k. I became very upset with Win 2k because of this bad experience (not just the grafhics, but also the idea that I couldn't listen to any music, neither watch videos, the OS occupied 2.5GB and it lasted ages to perform any task). It was also installed on the school's computers, where I got to hate it. Well, the real problem is that I tried to install Windows 98SE on the computer, which had only Win 2k on it. As the cd drive wouldn't work on Win 2k I had to create a copy of the disk on the hard drive from my desktop, via home network. I tried installing Win 98SEe from the aplication directly and from the command prompt and booting the computer in command-prompt-only mode. In neither way Win 2k would allow this downgrade. I checked again the disk's readme file and saw that the last possible way to install Win 98SEe was doing so from MS-DOS. So, I started trying to install MS-DOS. This computer's HDD has two partitions, both of about 2.5GB each, C: (primary, with Win 2k NTFS) and D:(primary). I wanted to install DOS on D:, so that there wouldn´t be trouble with Win 2k, in case i needed it for any reason before the Win 98SE installation. MS-DOS wouldn't detect D:, no matter what file system I used, FAT16 or FAT32. It would only detect C:, weird because it is NTFS. so, I made up some space on this partition for MS-DOS and installed it. The installation process went on without problems. It asked me to reboot the computer, and so I did. When booting the message "Non-System disk or disk error/Replace and press any key when ready" appeared. It did so every time I started the computer (it keeps doing it), and when trying to uninstall MS-DOS 6.22 with the uninstall disk that the installation disk made itself, ms-dos would start up and instantly "A:\>uninstall" would appear. Then the screen freezes in that position. I tried leaving it for weeks for the uninstall process to finish (although no status bar appeared) but nothing happened, there was no floppy drive or HDD activity. If somenoe can help me to finish installing Win 98SE, or at least going back to Win 2K I would really apreciate it.
An important detail is that the keys "8IK" don't work, and because of that "852" in the numeric keyboard neither. The BIOS testing utility confirmed that all devices that form part of the laptop work, including the HDD.
Once again thank you for your help,
Best Regards,
. Wiky5
If I were going to bother trying to save the laptop at all, I would delete all partitions and create one MSDOS partition. Then you should be able to install 98SE. As you now know, MS doesn't allow downgrades even though, in some cases, I wouldn't consider the newer OS an upgrade.
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Boot off the Win98 boot floppy, select "without CD-ROM support", then run FDISK from the DOS prompt. Remove all partitions, then recreate one or more partitions as you see fit. Once that's done, hit the ESC key to go back to the DOS prompt again, then run FDISK /MBR to clear the master book record. Reboot with the 98 boot floppy still in the drive, this time select "with CD-ROM support". Watch the screen as it will provide the letter designation for the CD drive. From the DOS prompt A:\>, type in format C: & press ENTER, then let it do it's thing. Once it's complete, pop in the Win98 CD, change from A:\> to the CD-ROM drive letter, type SETUP & press ENTER. Installation will begin....
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Thanks for the help, but I don't have any Win98 boot floppy, and as the CD-ROM Drive is PCMCIA it needs a preinstalled driver to work. I was going to delete the partitions during the installation of Win 98SE, but I couldn't even start it. Is there any way that I could download the files needed to create this Win98 boot floppy and from there installing the CD-ROM driver, or accesing the partition where I have the Win 98SE disk copy?
Best Regards,
. . . Wiky5
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DonaldJ:
Hi. I tried the solution that you say, buy an "ERROR 00301" message appears, with the options test and restart. test takes me to de bios config (which is kind of an advanced PC status configuration panel with a GUI interface. Yes, the mouse works on the BIOS) aftre testing all the components it says that there are no problems with my hardware. What I have doesn't seem to be a "physical" problem, but a virtual one.
Thanks for your contribuition anyway, Best Regards,
. . . Wiky5
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Hi. Thanks for your help, but what's failing doesn't have anything to do with hardware, what happens is that in order to install Win 98SE i had to install MS-DOS. Ms-Dos wouldn't find partition 2, so it installed in partition 1. They are both primary partitions, 1 is NTFS and 2 i tried with Fat16 and Fat32. Don't know why, but MS-DOS could install in NTFS. And now I find that it won't boot. DOS replaced my old Win2k boot.ini and autoexec.bat with its version, so thats why i can't access it. Anyway, what I want is to install Win 98SE, i don't care about loosing win2k. As my computer doesn't have a CD Rom drive I loaded an image of Win 98SE install disk onto partition 2 in the HDD. I made a Win 98SE startup disk. It boots properly and I can access partition 2, but not partition 1, but when i start the setup it closes and the A:\> appeares again. Possibly it takes the partition as if it were a cd drive, so when it is testing the drive it doesn't start as it can't find NTFS disks. I don't know, that's why I'm asking. This is the first time ever this happens to me.
Your help is deeply appreciated, best regards,
. . . Wiky5
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Fdisk can't delete ntfs partitions, there is a utility called delpart that can delete ntfs partitions under dos. 124kb so there will probably be enough room on most boot disks.
Delpart can be downloaded here.
As for reinstalling win98 I think your best bet is to search up on drivers for your cd-rom. If you can find a dos driver for it then you may be able to install it from the boot disk and start the install. This may not be possible as the original install was probably a factory cloned disk and any subsequent installs may have been made from floppies.
There is a last option if drivers for the cd-rom can not be obtained, it's not pretty though. Assuming this is one of the ide-compatible-but-with-smaller-connector style of laptop hdd's, find a laptop hdd to standard ide adapter and a old desktop pc(with ide). Install the hard drive into the old pc and install windows 98 via a standard ide cd-rom that is detected by the win98 boot floppy. Once the install is finished transplant the hdd back into the laptop and start installing drivers.
Of course I'm not sure if any of this will work for you, it's just what I would try to do. Remember I'm not responsible for any damage that may be caused.
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You cd-rom has dos drivers available.
The driver file is a self extracting exe file and will be easiest to extract on a working windows machine. When you double click the file you will be prompted, select an appropriate directory and click "unzip". If you don't select your own directory "C:\argosy\cdrom" is the default. Copy the entire contents of the cd-rom folder onto a floppy. To install in dos invoke "install.exe"
If you don't have a boot disk:
Try hereMy suggestion would be to use Automatic>win98_se.exe.
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Judgao: Thank you very much for your help. I personally couldn't find the correct drivers for the PCMCIA CD-ROM. I'll try if they work properly. I already thought also of placing the HDD in a desktop, but looks like it isn't an ide drive but another kind of drive with 68 pins (which are not pins, but contacts really). Some say it is a SCSI drive, but I found no adapter that could be plugged to it.
Merry Christmas and Best Regards,
. . . Wiky5
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DonaldJ,
I was refering to 44 to 40 pin ide adapters. Like this one and this one. These adapters are essentially pass-through, so no software is needed. These drives are ide/ata compatable but use a smaller size connector with 44 pins. The extra pins are used to power the drive and for mode select.
Scsi or other drives used in laptops may be a little more difficult to connect to desktops. I haven't used any of these myself.
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As stated you need to remove the hard drive completely from the caddy it is enclosed, then with the adaptor stated in post 14 you can install in a standard PC.
You can remove NTFS partitions (classed as non-DOS partitions) with FDISK, just create one partition with a W98SE Boot Disk and SYS the drive. Also copy over the i386 folder from the W2K CD.
http://freepctech.com/pc/001/002.shtml
Also see this XP article, W2K is the same:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307...
If you want to persevere with a PCMCIA CD Drive see:
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itguru,
Your information is quite helpful except as Wiky5 has already stated he has a 68 pin scsi hard disk. No luck on the adapter and maybe a few more problems with installation. He also stated that he wants to get rid win2k and install win98.
Just out of interest have anyone here ever successfully deleted a NTFS partition with fdisk? I know they are listed as non ms-dos partitions but whenever I actually tried to delete one it threw back an error. Delpart is authored by microsoft which adds more confusion to this matter.
[edit]
Looks like fdisk can delete ntfs partitions so long as they are not logical drives on extended partitions http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;261473
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Judgao: thanks for explaining what's my problem.
Also, it would be worth saying that fdisk can delete NTFS partitions indeed. At lesat I managed to get rid of my primary Win2K NTFS partition and refotmated it onto a usable FAT32.
Best Regards,
. . . Wiky5
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Judago, he does not have a SCSI drive in the Thinkpad it is standard laptop IDE, what he is seeing the end connector, if he removes the hard drive from the internal caddy, the end connector will pull off to reveal standard pin outs......
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