Old WIN 98 problem

Can anyone provide instructions to tell PC where to look when it requires the WIN 98 CD & no disk came with the system? TX

 

depends on whether the person setting up your system installed from the harddrive or the cd drive.

You can search the harddrive for cabinet files (*.cab) to see if the person setting it up copied the files to the harddrive and if they are there, direct the question to that location. I used to make a folder called win98, put the cabinet files in that, and install from there.

If the installation was made from the cd drive, there will not be much you can do except get another cd - either a manufacturer's install cd from the manufacturer or an ebay seller, or to get a win98 cd.

If there is some particular file you need, you could also try a google search on the remote chance you could find it online to download. You will need to be very careful about sites if you do this.

 

you can buy an original disk with liscence.
They are not really that expensive now.
Ensure that you are getting the right version - i.e. Windows 98 Second Edition discs are marked that - not Windows 98 ( the first edition).
Windows 98 SE are the majority of the discs you will find.

 

----On my 98 se I looked through C: and found somi instalations there. They are not all compatible. If so no harm they will not run. if they will work you will know when you select install

 

Please clear something up for me.
Are you saying that more than one set of Windows setup files exist on the same machine ? If so, I question the sensibility of this due to the compatability problem.
Or are you saying that there is more than one Windows installed.

BillyBob

 

I have no idea I install 98 se. I'm the only user. other versions were listed there "in C" they look like a comp. when you find them I think one i said it was nt. i don't rem. what else I ran into. it may be that even after i formated that some versions from 95 up were still there. i just checked to see if they would try to install or not. I did not let them run as on that comp. i did not want to add ram to it to upgrade to xp. all it was for was locksmith key codes. i deleted all programs i felt safe to do including networking. had over 90% free to make it faster don't need it " net" in a work van.

 

Well it sure looks like there is something going on there that I can not get a grip on.

I do not understand that at all. If you formated then why is that sutff still left. Is it on a separate partition or something ?

BillyBob

 

some things are forever on a hard drive. it's been a month since i did that. I may be wrong you don't have to format to upgrade, I think it gives you a choice to overwrite or not. I just repaired it for my sister so i don't have it or i could tell you more on how to find what i'm talking about. i will try to look at it later. this is one of her day's off so she probably got drunk last nite. i'll look as soon as i can. sorry/ i'm pretty sure i just krpt opening everything on C till i ran into the other versions.

 

True. You do not need to format. But if you do not then I believe that you should make sure that the new install goes overtop of the existing.
The HD that I am using right now started out on another machine with Win98on it. It now has XP Pro and has not been formated.

Not to my knowledge. Everytime I have formated an HD it was clean. But a pre-built machine may be different.

And also when upgrading from one OS to the other I NEVER booted from the HD to do it. I did once and had nothing but problems because some inuse files did not get overwritten properly.

BillyBob

 

I had some problems too. like missing dll's it didn't have inet connection had to install that then look all over the net to find all i needed. i tried xp but it was too slow so i had to delete that and reinstall 98 se. on 2'nd install --start - run--i just typed d:setup when i went back to 98 after that no problems.

 

recomended memory for xp is 128

 

The cabs could be located anywhere on the machine if they where even copied to the machine. The most common place that I have seen is C:\Windows\Options\Cabs

There is also a reg key that you can change that looks for the install directory. You can simply edit this to point to the cabs then you will never get a prompt for the CD.

 

Tx to y'all..... Decrypter response was a winner.... other responses, tho informative, were for responder generated problems/advice unrelated to my problem .... tx again...

 

Glad your good to go.----nice one Decrypter