Hi, Ive recently recieved the computer above, and tried to install 3.1 on it, but it only asks me to press any key to restart, and when I do, it repeas the message, again and again. Thanks

My Compaq did this before I installed an OS on it. It might not be detecting an OS. Stick an MS-DOS boot disk in the floppy drive and then press a key to restart. If it boots to DOS without asking you to restart, thats the problem. When DOS boots, use "fdisk" to set up the hard disk, then use "format c:" to format it. Then type "sys c:" to install DOS on the HD. Then you can take the floppy disk out, restart the computer, and install Windows. You need MS-DOS 3.3 - 6.22 to install Windows 3.x. Hope this helps. -Trent Windows XP Media Center Edition 2002 AMD Sempron 2500+ @ 1.74 Ghz 512 MB RAM

Luckily, I could format the drive with the windows 95 boot disk that came with a computer i have, but, obviously couldn't install MS Dos with the 95 discs. The MS Dos boot disks i got off the net gave the same reaction as before. Thanks anyway.

Unless you have already tried here, You can get MS-DOS boot disks here: http://oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/bo... They are zipped in WinImage format. You can get winimage free here: http://www.winimage.com/ Extract the files to a floppy disk. WinImage *should* put them in the right places on the disk so it can boot. I'm gonna do what I can to help you. Hope this works. -Trent Windows XP Media Center Edition 2002 AMD Sempron 2500+ @ 1.74 Ghz 512 MB RAM

Hi All, I have tried to install W3.1 from new disks but when my computer is digesting the setup it returns to MS-DOS stating "error loading com.com." My old W3.1 also won't load but at a different file. I've scandisked the C: drive and found a bad block at the begining and several downstream. All the MS-DOS programs run fine. The unit just doesn't want to load W3.1. Any ideas? Frank at prozach7@aol.com Frank

Does it acually say com.com or command.com? You most likely won't be able to install Windows until you get rid of those bad sectors. Run "scandisk /f" to fix the bad sectors. If it says it can't fix them or it just doesn't fix them, the only fix is to reformat the hard disk. Formating means losing all of your data, though. Unless you have the install disks for all of your programs, copy everything onto floppies. Hope this helps. -Trent Windows XP Media Center Edition 2002 AMD Sempron 2500+ @ 1.74 Ghz 512 MB RAM

Thanks Trent. There are some 10 bad clusters including one at the beginning of the scan. The original W 3.1 (that came with the machine) failed while the computer was off for a long time. However MS-DOS 6.0 works fine. The original shows the Windows page then says "error loading GDI.exe" sometimes and "---USER.EXE other times. So I got a new-in-box W 3.11 and tried to install it and that failed before the Windows picture came up with "error loading comm.drv". Bootlog shows "loadfail at comm.drv failure code is 00". I tried it on this machine and it worked fine, meaning the software is ok. Wouldn't the program seek good portions of the hard drive and ignore the bad clusters? Very strange! Frank Frank