I recently got my hands on an old but functional laptop, a Dell Inspiron 3000 (200mhz/64mb of ram). It was running winME, and it had a lot of crap installed on it. It also asked for the ME cd from time to time, which I don't have. Rather than try to sort out the previous owner's problems, I decided to do a clean install with my old windows 98 second edition CD. The only challenge so far was that I do not have a CD-Rom drive for the laptop. I restarted using a Win 98 boot disk, and I deleted and re-created the primary partition using FDisk. From A:, I then formatted the new partition by typing "format C:". I created the folder win98 on C:, which is the hard disk on the laptop. Using Fastlynx on a floppy disk, I copied the entire contents of my win98se cd from my pc to C:\win98 on the notebook (via serial cable). I was sure to copy all files and subdirectories. At this point, I thought I was ready to do a clean install from C:\win98\win98. I typed "setup.exe" within the installation directory, and almost nothing happened. The cursor moved down one line and blinked there. It did not return to the command prompt, it did not give any error message, and it did not load anything even after leaving it like that for an hour. I could not restart with ctrl+alt+del, so I was forced to re-power the laptop. I re-created this problem a few times by rebooting, attempting to setup and then getting the same problem. I tried recopying the contents of my install CD, I tried reformatting, and I even replaced the partition and then reformatted again. I've managed to borrow a second copy of windows 98se, but I have the same problem with these install files as well. The CD surfaces are nice and clean. Using the utilities on my bootdisk, I ran chkdsk and scandisk, but both found no problems. I selected "scan disk surface for errors", but there were no problems reported. All components in the laptop are the factory originals from Dell. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Check at the Dell support site >http://tinyurl.com/a5cwg

You are trying to install onto the same partition where your source files are located. Create a second partition and copy the CD contents to it. It need not be a large partition (500 MB is all you need but if you have 20GB then go for 2GB (or more) to store future backups.) Then run setup from the second partition. It will install on the first. Bryan

It sounds as if you've done everything correctly. The hard disk/partition is recognized and functional. I've never had a problem installing 98SE from the CD files which have been copied to the same partition. (Though I've never done it on a DELL laptop so that may have something to do with it if the machine has some quirks I don't know about.) Did you "sys" the hard disk and the machine is booting on it's own? I would rename your source directory to 98SE or 98files or something else so the path isn't c:\win98\win98. Theoretically, it shouldn't have a problem but Windows sometimes does funny things. You'd have to use the MOVE command; move c:\win98 c:\98se However, this isn't expanded yet. Change to the c:\win98\win98 directory and type in; extract win98_46.cab move.exe /L c:\ This will place move.exe in the root of c:. It's a good day when you learn something

Bryco, I've done this many times, and have not had the alleged problem you describe, IE using the same procedure Dylan, I don't know what to tell you, but here's a few suggestions: Since this is not working, try just a couple of different: Get/ make yourself a bootdisk with the "sys" command, and either "format C:/q/s" or execute "sys C:" (You can type "format /?" and get a list of the switches for the command) The forgoing will make your C: drive bootable, and you can then start up right to the hard drive. Also, sounds like you are doing this the way I do. There is no need to copy the entire CD. If I'm using a CDROM, I just "copy *.*" in the \Win98 directory. That's all you need for now. Did you actually type "setup.exe?" I don't remember if this works, try just typing "setup" and of course the ENTER key. Is it possible that some corruption is going on with the file transfer? Have you tried "dir?" from C:\win98 to see if you can "read" the files?

Strictly setup.exe is the correct command but MS have arranged things so that just setup will do instead. This is the same for any exe file. DerekW

Thanks everyone for your responses. After a good night's sleep, I realised that I made one mistake in my previous attempts to install from my second win 98se cd. I tried to re-partition and reinstall using my original cd, but I did not reformat before I switched to the files the borrowed CD. I tried again, formatting before I copied the new cd's files into the hard disk and I had no problems installing. Apparently, there is a file system error on my old CD. I put the CD into my desktop computer and I got "this is not a valid win32 operation" when I tried to run the applications on the disk. The corrupted files were apparently not replaced when I tried to overwrite the install files from my borrowed disk. "format C: /q/s" fixed that. I have tossed the faulty cd. By the way, if others google this posting, there is no problem with the method I used for clean installing win98 on a laptop with no cd rom, as long as your win98 cd works. The serial connection to dos from winXP works fine, and then the OS can be installed from the hard disk. Thanks again everyone.