Installing CD drivers

I have an old Sony VAIO PCG-Z505RX. After a large number of bytes were corrrupted on my hard drive, I became angry and frustrated and stupidly reformatted my hard drive from a startup disk lying around from another computer. I later learned that one should only reformat from the system recovery disk. The laptop will no longer accept the system recovery disk.

At this point I can only start it from a Windows 98 CD I have. Startup floppies give me the message "Not a system disk ". When I try to install Windows 98, it says there are no CD drivers. It treats the CD as my A: drive. I have the floppy with drivers that came with the computer; I just don't know how to use them. I copied the Windows 98 CD from my desktop and searched for the drivers that I see are on a directory of the A: drive. From my desktop they are on E:\win98\base5.cab. I then tried to copy the driver from the Sony floppy to E:\win98\base5.cab, but I can't drag it and the command prompt tells me there is no such directory.

Can anyone suggest how to get the PC working?

Thanks.

 

Go to Bootdisk, and download the file for 98 SE OEM. Double click this file with a floppy in the drive, and one will be created for you. Do not copy the downloaded file onto the floppy and expect it to work.
Boot the computer with it, and choose With CD ROM Support. Watch the screen for a message giving you the drive letter for your CD, it will not be the usual letter. This message appears before the A:\> appears.
Use this letter in place of the X below.
X:\win98\setup

 

Many thanks, but I already had a Windows 98 SE startup disk. When I try to boot from it I get the message "Invalid system disk." I did follow your instructions in case this time it would work, but I still get the same message. I also tried downloading the DOS 6.22 startup disk to see if I least I could get a DOS computer, but again I got "Invalid system disk." I pushed F2 to enter setup and to tell the computer to boot from a floppy, but it boots from my CD and gives me an A prompt.

Any other suggestions?

 

Hi rusty2. It sounds like the floppy drive is malfunctioning. You could try using a floppy drive cleaner, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Do you have any way of testing another floppy drive?

If you have a computer with a burner, you may want to try burning a "bootable CD" with the files on it from the drivers floppy (and the files from a boot floppy if the drivers disk is not bootable). I doubt though that it will get your floppy drive to work.

Look up your model at Sony. There should be a method of OS installation or get the manual if you do not have it.

Matt

 

I really don't think the problem is with the floppy drive. I think I caused it by reformatting with an old startup disk that had the wrong OS. I wouldn't be surprised if the problem is too many operating systems on the CD, floppy, etc. I wish I had known about bootdisk.com then.

My computer with a CD burner runs on Windows XP. I also have access to one with Windows ME. Can I burn a bootable CD with Windows 98 SE from one of these?

Unfortunately, I read the manual after I reformatted using the old startup floppy. The manual says to only reformat from the system recovery CD. If you do what I did, the computer will no longer accept the system recovery CD. I called Sony and paid their support around $30 to be told to send the computer to them to reinstall the OS. They will charge around $240-250 for that service.

rusty2

 

Boot from the windows 98 disc and choose with cdrom support. While it's booting, watch which letter it assigns to your cdrom. When it gets to the A: prompt type d: or e: or whichever letter it assigned to it. Then type cd win98 followed by the enter key and then type setup, again followed by the enter key. Setup should run and you should be able to install windows.

As an aside, are you sure that floppy drive is working? Formatting with a startup disk from the wrong OS should really have no bearing on whether or not it'll boot from the floppy. Try this. Set your bios to boot from the floppy first, cdrom second and hard drive third. Put the floppy in the drive and boot from it without the win98 cd in the cdrom drive. If you receive a non system disc error it's because it went right by the floppy. There's no bootable cd in the cdrom drive so it goes to the hard drive. That's formatted and more than likely has no system files on it so it gives you a non system disc error. Now, put the win98 cd in the cdrom and reboot, leaving the floppy disc in the drive. If it boots from the cd, it again went right by the floppy and picked the next one in line to boot from which would be the cdrom. If you've tried a couple of bootable floppy discs and none work it would seem to indicate that the floppy drive isn't reading the discs properly.

 

Even though it boots from the CD drive, when I follow your instructions it says "No drivers found . Aborting installation" and doesn't assign a letter. Before the A: prompt it says:

Device driver not found OEMCD001
No valid device driver selected.

 

Have a look at my last post. I added to it since your last post.

 

Thanks.

Sounds like the floppy also doesn't work. If that's the case, it was intermittent for awhile and just died yesterday. All I really want the computer for is a backup. My husband has several old computers that he runs DOS programs on. They won't support the newer backup devices like external hard drives. He's used to backing up using laplink with a serial or parallel cable. The Sony is light weight, easy to take back and forth from his office, and would be a perfect backup machine. (He now uses Toshiba porteges that we bought well over ten years ago in the Windows 3.1 era and never had a day's trouble with. The only problem is that the databases he uses have outgrown the disk size of the Toshibas.)

rusty2

 

Boot from the cd and at the prompt, type sys c: followed by the enter key. If you don't receive an error message it should have worked. Then remove the cd from the drive, reboot and see if it will boot to a c: prompt. Post back with the results. Just so you know, I have to leave for a while so unless somebody else jumps in here, it may be a while before I can post back.

 

Zander,

I really appreciate your help. I've already tried that and it didn't work. I think the error was "Bad Command ", but I'd have to try again to make sure. Based on your comments and those of others, it occurred to me to copy from a start up floppy to a CD on my working XP desktop, but I don't know how to make a CD bootable.

I also have to leave so further tries will have to wait.

rusty2

 

I guess the next thing I'd try would be to burn a bootable cd. You should be able to use either of the two systems you mentioned earlier for this. How you burn the disk depends on what software you use. I have Easy CD Creator so that's the only one I'm really familiar with. If you search the help files of the program you used for bootable cd you'll probably get the answer as to how it's done. Whichever program you have, you need a bootable floppy disk. Download a 98 boot disk from Mark's link above. Put a blank floppy disk in the drive and double click on the file you downloaded. This will create the bootable floppy. Then, use floppy disk to create the bootable cd. Once you've done this, try booting from the cd in the problem computer. If it boots, choose with cdrom support in the menu. Then, when at the a: prompt, take the boot cd out of the drive, put the win98 disk in and type d: or whichever drive letter gets assigned to your cdrom. If you get a d: prompt the drivers loaded. Type the following lines with each of them being followed by the enter key.

cd win98
setup

If setup runs you should be home free. If not there's another thing you could try that I can think of but this is the easier way so I'll wait to see what the outcome is. Also, if this doesn't work, try booting from the burned cd again and at the prompt type sys c:. Then try booting without the cd. Does it boot to a c: prompt? Need to know this.

If you need help with making the bootable cd you'll have to post back and let us know what program you're using. Also, if this doesn't work, have a look at the floppy disk that has the cdrom drivers on it and let me know the names of the files that are on the disk and also the total size of them. One more thing.

I find this odd. Is this a regular win98 disk you're using?

 

rusty2, you and Zander have been putting in some great work. I am just worried that at the end you will be defeated by the "restore CD" setup that is probably designed to defeat you both.

My suggestion for a backup system for your husband might be a CD burner for each machine. He could then transport about 650mb of data uncompressed (nearly 2gb compressed at 3:1) using a CD-RW disk. For the older machines you would have to check the system requirements, some will run on 486 system machines, some have higher requirements (like a Pentium II). Anyway, it may be an alternative if come to a dead end. You might agree, that Sony "repair" quote does not sound like an option.

Matt

 

I've thought about this too, but I'm sort of hoping that being the computer is a bit older we may be able to get it to work. From what I've experienced, some of the older ones don't seem to be tied to the restore cd as much as the newer ones are. Time will tell.