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my friend's computer won't boot. i got a win 95 floppy boot disk. i get to the bios list, and then it says starting windows 95. an "a" prompt comes up, and i'm lost because i'm not familiar with dos commands. any help would be greatly appreciated.
vandal67
'Won't boot' often means different things to different folks.
Can you describe exactly what happens when you attempt to start the machine without the floppy? Any specific error messages?
It might also be important to know which version of 95 as well (A, B or C)
Had the machine been working previously?
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trying to boot without the flopy results in getting to the amibios sys. config. screen which has a (C) after the word configuration, and there's a blinking cursor at the bottom. one curious thing is right after it checks nvram i have to enter current password, which i usually don't do until i'm ready to log onto the network. the machine worked yesterday.
vandal67
0
Try this: enter
type c:\msdos.sys
.. and if you only get a few lines of output, that may be the problem.
Also, in order to determine the exact version, enter:
dir c:\windows\command.com
and report back that information - mainly the date and size of the file.
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update: finally got to bright blue win 95 screen, then to bios page which says staring windows 95 at bottom, and under that it says "data error reading drive c - abort, retry, fail?
vandal67
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Not a good sign - restart with the bootdisk and run scandisk c:
Just fyi - the 'BIOS page' has little to do with Win95. The order of events is that the computer performs the POST (Power On Self Test) and displays the hardware config - - then the system boots to DOS and loads Win9x (or tries to)
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typed in what u suggested - response was: volume in drive a has no label - volume serial number is 2115-7E41 - path not found
vandal67
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I don't think you entered the command correctly: 'volume in drive a' refers to the floppy.
At any rate, scandisk is indicated to find & correct any errors on the C: drive.
Wouldn't hurt to check the CMOS setup and ensure that the hard drive is recognized there - also, it's possible that you are using the wrong bootdisk for that system.
From a floppy boot, enter:
fdisk
and select option (4) to determine the drive's status.
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Beginning to sound like hard drive failure - although, just to confirm, enter
ver
from a floppy boot - there are different versions of 95 - the older version is not compatible with large hard drives.
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I'll bet that u are usin' a win 95 original or win 95a bootdisk and the version of win 95 on the hdd is win 95b (also knmown as OSR2), and the c: drive is fat32. (I don;t know if win 95c supports fat32 or not.)
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Yes, that is one avenue that I was already exploring, but the question is somewhat moot since the OP has proclaimed the problem solved.
"I don;t know if win 95c supports fat32 or not."
What do you think? Version 'B' would, but somehow 'C' would not???
Remarkable
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