Problem with getting back to WIN98

Hello everyone,

I've got a problem installing win 98se whereas I've done it more than a few times before on the same machine.
What's the heck? Well, I wanted to try the xp, only to find out I got insufficent ram (128), so I never got past the installation. But seemingly it messed up something with my (maybe?) config file, and now I can't go back to win 98. I've got the start up disk and everything goes smoothly but then suddenly I get the following:

Preparing to start your computer.
This may take a few minutes, Please wait.....

The windows 98 startup disk could not create a temporary drive for the diognostic tools. This may be because this computer has less than the minimum required extended memory.

Path not found - :\COMAND.COM
Path not found - :\EXTRACT.EXE
Path not found - :\README.TXT

Bad command or file name
The diognostic tools were successfully loaded to the drive

File not found

To get help, type HELP and press ENTER

A:\>

Right, after I get to this I do the standard d: (which should be my cdrom), and then setup, but nothing happens. I try dir and then I get something like this:

Volume in drive D: is MS Ram drive

Directory of D:\ File not found

I don't know if there's been some switch between the drive letters or whatever, but d: should be my cd rom since there are no other drives or partitions. Unfortunately I am dos-ignorant so if there is a way to fix it, it's beyond me.

I've seen a post on this site with the same error message, but it was about not beeing able to make win startup disk, so I couldn't apply the solution.
I've also seen the answer on some other site to run scandisc and that it should remedy the situation. Somehow I doubt this, since I don't have a clue if I can run scandisc without an os.

I formatted the disc again, but everything goes the same way. Cd rom was all right all the time, no special set of drivers were ever required, so these should not be an issue. I relly don't know what could be causing such problems???

Any help would be highly appreciated.

PS sorry if there are grammar errors, I'm not a native speaker

 

Well, I am at the office right now (hotel industry ), so I can't try it, but I already ran fdisk, I thought I'd try with fat16, but it didn't do the trick, so I converted to fat 32 again, but all was the same.

I will try it later when I get home though, but I'm pretty sure cd rom is not e:, f: or anything to k:,
and I believe it was d: in my previous setups, mayby it's something with ramdisk then?

 

With the above error would suspect bad ram or bad boot floppy diskette.

 

Hello targon, as Steve noted when you boot with a Win98 Floppy startup disk and choose the "CD-Rom" support option it will create a RAM drive which will be lettered immediately after your last hard drive letter. eg: If last hard drive is C: then the Ramdrive will be D: and your CD-Rom will be re-lettered as E:

You have to put the Win 98 CD in the CD Rom (E run "E:\ Setup" from there.

 

Thanks everyone for propositions, I appreciate your help.

@JohnB - The problem with e: is I can't get to it, when I run e: I get "invalid drive specification" or something like that telling me it's non-existant (same as f: g: etc.). So I thought maybe it's a driver problem, but it loads normally when I start the computer (Secondary Master: Liteon bla bla )

@Steve - I did the fdisk thing, there is only one partition (primary dos) which I then deleted, so it prompted for restart (but told me to shut down the computer first??), then it loaded c as virtual disk (ramdrive) which is probably due to no primary partition which I then created, and wanted to set it active, but I got the info that it's already set active. Thus I returned where I was before the fdisk, d is again msram drive

@TopFarmer - that is what I suspect myself. I'll fetch another boot disk from a friend and try, but as much as I can see mine also functions all right (looks all right after dir/w). I'll ckeck the ram phisically though I can't imagine what could be wrong there...

Oh no, XP what have you done?

 

that is normal, you will have the hdd partitions than the ram drive. The cd can be any letter after that, but will be displayed dueing boot.

If you get no error messages dueing boot, at the prompt A: just type in SETUP and enter, the path to the CD was set and does not need to be typed in.

 

Well, that wasn't the solution, but what you previously proposed was
Put another boot disk in and diagnostic tools loaded with no problem, then accessed e: (it was e: after all although now in windows it's d again ) then setup and off we go!!! So a corrupted boot disk, jeez!
Ok, special thanks to TopFarmer for proposing this (should you ever come on holiday to Croatia, let me know )
Thanks everyone else as well, you've all been of great help.
I'm off now to set everything up...

 

Thanks for the feedback, it helps us to know if we are on right \wrong track.

Do not think I will ever get to Croatia, did have to google to find out where.