10 replies to this topic

[Turmoil]

Would anyone know how to install Windows 95 back onto a formatted laptop that has interchangeable CD-Rom and FDD? I can boot the it up when I have the floppy drive in with a boot disk, but to install W95 I need to have the CD-Rom drive in, and I have yet to be able to swap the drive while the computer is on. So far I have tried copying all the files from a boot disk to the hard drive, with no luck. Just the same message “System disk invalided...”. Also I have tried booting off the CD but it again just say’s “System disk invalided...”. (Maybe burning the boot disk to CD?)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[StankDawg]

the Win95 install CD should be bootable. Unles sit is an UPGRADE cd, then it might not.

Would it be possible to install it onto that hard drive in another machine and transplant it back into the laptop after the install is complete?

[Turmoil]

I may be doing something wrong but... I can't seem to get it to boot off the Windows 95 CD .

Only have this one laptop to fool around with so I can't put the hard drive into another and install it there. Hmm...

[hacnslash]

What is the laptop's configuration?, maybe you could squeeze some sort of *nix on it, just be careful if it is an earlier linux distro, cuz I've heard you can have problems with a lot of laptop-specific parts (lcd's pcmcia), With newer distro's this seems to have dissapeared, I know a person who recently installed Red hat 8 on an old (P II 300 mhz, 64 mb ram....) laptop, and had no driver problems, or any other problems whatsoever.

As for installing windaz 95, you said that you want to install it *back* onto the laptop, what did you try to do that didn't work out?? And maybe you could try, as a last resort buying an external floppy, don't get an external cd drive, cuz I think you would notice the speed difference from an internal cd-rom, but as for the floppy, it goes so slow, that you probably wouldn't notice the difference. Oh, and one more thing, since you already have a floppy, you might just wanna buy an external one from your local shop (best buy, circuit city, whatever) and install windaz, then "change your mind" and take it back

[Turmoil]

The low down:
Today in school someone came to me with this laptop and told me to fix it, of course I said Ok. So all during school (I go to vocational school) time was spent trying to figure out a way to put Windows 95 on a 133Mhz, around 30 Megs of RAM Compaq laptop, this being the first laptop I have dealt with. Since this is not my laptop, I can only put Windows 95 on it.

Tomorrow I will scurry around the school looking for an external floppy or CD-Rom drive. Or I will just go down the street to Best Buy and borrow one of theirs for an hour.

[hacnslash]

Oh ok, so the person who gav you their laptop (to fix it) wants win 95 on it, ok I get it, thanks for clearin that up

[davetgra]

the easiest way to do it would be to copy the CAB files over from the CD and run setup from from the HDD.

[nick84]

Did you check the cd rom drive is listed as a boot device in the BIOS / have u tried any other bootable cd's on it - to access the BIOS on some laptops you have to download special tools from the manufacturers website.

[Souljacker]

You could try getting Win95 on floppy it's about 22 disks

[StankDawg]

the easiest way to do it would be to copy the CAB files over from the CD and run setup from from the HDD.

I agree... copy the whole CD to the HD. Jin-Rai told me that he had that exact same problem b4, and that is what he did.

[Turmoil]

It’s alive!

Today I when around my school looking for a external drive of some sort, I found an external zip drive “It will have to do” I thought to myself. So after installing the Zip drive we copied all the *.CAB files in the win95 CD to the hard drive and it worked!

Thanks for all your help