IBM Aptiva 27U Unit came with W98 preinstalled with an Aptiva Product Recovery and Diagnostics CD-Rom. I have added a burner and a nic and have been running 98SE and W2k successfully. Now I want to put the original OS back on the original HD. I fdisked and formatted (format c: /s), but after I put the recovery disc in and rebooted, nothing happened. I loaded 98SE no problem and browsed the recovery disc. Guess what, no setup.exe in root. I have a cd burner, so what do I need from my 98SE disc to make this recovery disc work? I know I could return my hardware to oem and the recovery disc would work, but I'm curious as to whether this can be done. Thanks

Did you make a startup floppy drive disk, to use to initiate the installation?

If your recovery disk is a normal, commercial disk you cannot write to it with a computer burner. Even if it were the right grade, it would probably have been fully closed out before shipping.

Sorry if I wasn't clear in my initial post of what I am trying to accomplish. yes, I made a startup floppy disc which I used to fdisk / format/ and initiate startup for installing standard W98. The Recovery disc would most likely have been closed out before shipping. I would copy the contents of the Recovery disc to a folder on the HD and then any files that are required from the standard W98 disc also to the HD to enable the Recovery disc to load to the HD. I would then burn a cd with all these files on it.(making it bootable is another story) Right now, I install standard W98 and then any drivers I need, I pull from the recovery disc. Perhaps an easier way to go would be to put the drivers from the RD onto the standard 98 disc. Since I paid for both copies I hope this isn't improper. I think its time to get another cd-rw and play with this concept. Thanks for the response.

Your idea of copying both to a new CDR is workable. I have done that myself. You will probably have to drop some of the extra garbage Microsoft puts on the CD to make room for your drivers, but the idea of adding to the standard commercial disk is just not workable. The computer is not physically capable of writing to that type of disk.

Thanks Chris I'm definitely going to play with this in the future.