HAve a couple of 486's with dead hard drives. Have some good hard drives about 320 mb. that I am trying to install but the system will not recognize. Setup auto-drive recognotion utility recognizes the drive properly but still cant get the computer to recognize the drive after i boot it up with command com.Is there any advice out there on setting up a "new" HD in a 486. Once the drive is recognized, can I then load in DOS then Windows 3.1 or 95?

Stan, Everyone seems to have their own way to set up DOS and Win 3.1. I don't copy any system files to the disk when I install DOS 6.22. I format the drive with FORMAT C: Then I stick disk 1 of DOS 6.22 in the floppy and reboot. DOS begins the installation when it boots up to the A: drive and from then on I mostly say YES to questions. When DOS is all done installing you are told to remove all disks, then reboot. When the screen comes up to the DOS prompt, I stick disk 1 of win 3.1 in the floppy and type A:SETUP and again mostly say YES to the prompts. Thats about it. With a couple of 320 MEG hard drives you could install Win 95. You just need to have a boot disk with the drivers for your CD-ROM on it unless you have the old Win 95 disk installation set. Check out www.bootdisk.com if you don't have one for Win 95. Doug

Doug You are the first in a while to note that MS-DOS 6x will NOT setup to a HD with Systewm Files on it. Yes yours is the correct and only way MS-DOS should be installed. Infact will MS-DOs 6.22 Setup format the drive for you, if it is not aready done?

DOS GUY, I don't know if DOS will offer to format for you. I always format first. Have to try that next time.

I work on computers that are donated to a school. I use a hard drive setup utility disk. Takes less than one minute on auto-install to install a HD. There is one drawback, it has to be a IDE HD. The one that I use is EZDrive. It formats & Partitions and installs the HD (1 minute)It takes less time than it does to read this message.