I have a 486DX, IBM Aptiva 510. I am trying to reload windows95. The computer came with Windows 3.1, but I have since upgraded to Windows95. I have done fdisk, reformatted C:, and am at the point of doing setup. When I run setup, I get the message "Setup found a compressed volume or a disk-cache utility on your computer. Quit setup and check your compressed volume with your disk compression software or remove the disk-cache utility. Then run setup again" How do I do this? and what does this mean? I do not recall using disk compression, but I could be that I have. Also, when I boot from my A: boot disk, I get an error "ERROR: PCI Read configuration failure". I'm not sure if both these issuses are related. Any help is needed. THanks! Lori

First of all since you have a IBM there can be a lot of problems(heh....) But find out exactly what kind of hard drive you have on your comuputer. Open the computer up and look at its actual specs. Go to who ever makes the drive at their site and download or order the software for your hard drive. This software will include setup utils and a low level format utility for your drive.Because I am assumming that your hard drive is pretty old and will need to be low level formatted to work correctly again. This will bing all the sectors and configs for your hard drive so it will be able to read and write again. Once you do this you should be able to install 95 on your computer again. Also make sure you have more than just minimun ram on your computer which is a big deal indeed. Now with your PCI error look inside your computer and see whats installed in your PCI slots. Make sure everything is plugged in correctly with a snug fit. If you still have the same errors try taking your PCI hard ware out and if necessary replacing it with something else to test it out. It also maybe you motherboard having problems. In this case you will need a whole new motherboard installed. SO check all configs of your computer and test everything. By the way are you trying to install 95 through floppies only or do you have a cd of 95? I hope this helps keep posting if not....

sorry I do not agree with nef. All the 486 computers I know of had IDE hard drives not st506 drive. you only low level format st596 and not IDE drives. there would not be enough space on an old st506 drive for win95. You should have an autofind in the bios setup that will find the numbers for the hard drive. You must do that before you fdisk. You must fdisk correctly - you must boot from a setup disk and you must delete the old partition and you must create a new partion and you must SET THE PARTION ACTIVE. a lot of people forget that step. then you must exit fdisk and soft boot(ctr+alt+del)or restart the computer. then you must format with the command format c:/s to get it to boot. If you have done this correctly you must then load the program from a floppy to get the cd rom to work. this will load stuff in the startup files so you must reboot again. then install win95 from cd rom(I will not use the floppy disk as too many disks and takes too long.) Owen

Thanks Owen. I did hours of searching the web for instruction on how to fdisk, reformat, and reload windows correctly on my Aptiva. Your tips above are very accurate. I found a unofficial Aptiva web site that was loaded with tips and solutions. http://members.aol.com/don5408/aptiva.html This site told me the correct way to do fdisk, and format. Owen, you are very corrct to say it has to be done right. And it's important not to leave out any steps. One of the things I did wrong with format was leaving out the /s (I should have done format c:/s). I wonder if this was a major problem also? I was getting the error messages because of my boot disk. I got it from a support tech and it was for windodow 98. The tech guy said it should work. Well, it didn't. The "compressed volume and disk cache" error was because of this boot disk. YOU CAN NOT USE A WINDOWS 98 BOOT DISK to set up windows 95. As a last ditch effort I started the computer with my windows 3.1 boot disk, worked and reworked the fdisk and format, loaded the old software and win 3.1 onto the hard drive. (my CD for win3.1 is compressed and you take windows with all the software) I'm wondering if I could have used the 3.1 boot disk for fdisk and format, and then used the windows 95 CD to load windows? Then I wouldn't have all the software (DIsney, Quicken, ect.) that I now will have to remove. And then I wouldn't have a copy of win 3.1 on my hard drive. Another thought. When I loaded win95 on my HD I put it into a different folder called win95. Can I remove the folder called windows (which is windows 3.1)? or is there a cleaner way to clean up this mess? and suggestions are welcome and thanks!! Lori All and all, I am happy to have my computer back.