I have a tough situation... I have a laptop with win 95 on it right now and I want to put win 98 on it. The laptop does not have a cd-rom on it so I networked my laptop to my main computer and started installing using the cd-rom on my main pc... however when the install was starting it said that I could not overwrite win 95 because the OS was the full program and not an upgrade... I need to know if there is anyway to bypass this or if I can format my laptop drive and then still use the main computer's cd-rom to install the os... PLEASE HELP!!!!!

The first thing to do is copy the win98 folder from the CD on the other system to the laptop. That way, in case of a 'disaster', you won't have to use the other system. You can install from the win98 folder on the laptop.

How am I able to retrieve the file if I reformat my hard drive???

You can try the following:

1. Find and rename win.com as win.old - the presence of win.com makes a win98 installation balk.
2. Copy all win98 installation files to the local drive first, then run setup. It's faster and more reliable that way.
3. If prompted for a Windows directory, feel free to accept the default of windows.000. However, since it creates a brand new registry, certain apps may have to be reinstalled.

Copy the win98 folder over 'BEFORE' you do anything else.

Do not format your drive!!!!

Hi All,

Does the hard drive on your laptop contain an extended partition with a logical drive?

In other words, does the hard drive show up as two hard drives, C: and D:?

Mesich

i get an error message about "Cannot copy mptsetup: Data error (cyclic redundancy check)" and then stops the copying process... any ideas?

I would venture to say that you are going to lose the network connection at some point of the install.

There are some other options if you have not yet formatted the hard drive or went so far into the install that you can no longer boot into Win95.

Post back with the following:

Have you formatted the hard drive?

Can you still start Win95 on the laptop?

Do you have a second partition on the hard drive? See response #6.

Mesich

I can still get win 95

I haven't formatted the drive and there is no partition... this laptop is a p.o.s. with only 1GB hd and 16 MB ram... not much to work with

another question... do I need all of the files from the win98 cd to complete the start up? For example the files from the cdsample folder? Seem pretty useless

No you do not need all of them. The only thing you need to load Win98 is the Win98 directory on the cd.

With a 1Gb hard drive that eliminates my previous thoughts.

I shall give this a bit more thought instead of just throwing something out.

I will respond soon.

Mesich

Think I figured it out...

- copied the files from win98 folder onto PC (worked better there for some reason)

- used network connection to copy them into C drive on laptop

- renamed win.com to win.old

- used win98 bootdisk (found download on web)

- used option to starup without cd-rom support

- went into c: directory and found win98 folder and started setup.exe

.... it's just going through the setup right now!!!! yay me... hope it works, thanks for all the help everyone!!!

But when I was copying the files to my main PC, I had a bit of trouble with a few of them (think the disc is scratched up) but I didn't bother copying them... they were from the "content" and "ols" folders (I don't use aol and that stuff only msn and that's the one that I copied... the rest I left)
Will this cause me a problem during installation????

It shouldn't as all you need to copy is the Win98 directory and run it from there.

Copy Win98 to the Hard Drive

Mesich

Mesich...

Do you know why I kept getting that error message when trying to copy files???

"Cannot copy mptsetup: Data error (cyclic redundancy check)"

While your thinking Mesish , here is some extra info to throw into the equation .

You may to like to fine tune this as you are more involved .

http://www.bootdisk.com/toptenq.htm

According to the site running a scandisk is good before installing, it gave me that option right before the install of 98 but I didn't bother fixing incase my win98 folder was part of it (me being paranoid after 5 hours of this) it ok if I run it after right???

Princess,

After the install check how much space is left available on the hard drive to see if you can keep the Win98 directory or have to delete it. Hopefully you can keep it as you will need the .cab files for installing other programs, drivers and such. Otherwise you would have to network it with the other computer when trying to perform such task and direct it to the cdrom there.

You should run scandisk and defrag after the install.

I would first remove any unnecessary programs from it.

Delete any Junk Files then run scandisk and defrag.

Little late on backing up the drivers but you do have the other computer to access the internet and get those.

JohnW,
Thank you for the link. I have been going to bootdisk.com for quite some time and never even noticed that. I shall check it out closer in a couple of hours. Time for a quick nap. :)

Post back with your progress Princess.

Mesich

Hello
I wish only to remind you all (including Mesich:)
that installing Win98 on a  computer with a slow CPU
and only 16MB of RAM is not a very goodidea.
Win98 needs more to behave properly.
There are, though, 2 possible ways to upgrade:
-install Win95B (aka OSR2)
-install 98Lite => Win98 with/without IExplorer
integration and using Win95 Explorer.exe
princessu2, if you wish further details, post a message at best5ro@yahoo.com
 

all the best

Stefan

well it worked... the only prob, it kind of froze up on me and I have had a real hard time getting it to run properly... but as soon as I can get to it I would like to delete as much of the junk that I can... The laptop was given to me by someone so there was a lot of garbage on it already...

If anyone might know, it used to have Netscape on it and I can seem to delete it from the control panel... when I try it still shows up and it also causes some trouble when booting up (always did that.... even before 98)

Best5, Thanks for the advice... but I don't have 98 lite and can't stand 95... oh well It's just a comp to play around with and mess up anyways!!! hehe

Mesich, thanks for all the help... I had to delete the win98 folder since I had no room at all on the hd.... but I don't have a problem with the networking, so that's ok with me...

Princess

Hi Princess,

You are very welcome.

Delete the Netscape folder in C:\Programs Files as it will be left over after using Add/Remove Programs.

Also go to C:\Windows and delete nsreg.dat

If you are still getting errors when booting up post back.

While you cleaning it up on forgot to get rid of all the junk addware/spyware.
I use Spybot

What is the manufacture and model of the laptop? I might have some RAM for it that I could give you.

Take care,
Mesich

Tried it... there was no Netscape folder but I was able to delete nsreg.dat... I still get error messages about the following...

C:\NETSCAPE\system\vntstimd.exe
C:\NETSCAPE\system\vtcprac.386
C:\NETSCAPE\system\dial.386

I can still boot up but its just a pain...

The laptop is a Compaq armada 1100

Those are due to references leftover in either the system.ini file or the registry when Netscape was uninstalled.

The quickest,easiest and safest way to get rid of them is RegCleaner.

After downloading and opening it up select Tools at the top.
Select Registry Cleanup and Do Them All.

Look for references to the above files and delete them.

I have never had a problem deleting the items that RegCleaner finds.

Mesich