format c: drive

Holy jumping Catfish.

I just realized something.

I just read that someone else could waste my time. And here all along I was under the impression that it was only me that could do that.

So Rockster2U I don't think it was cah1935 that was wasting my time. If I did not want my time invested I would not do it.

So I think it would be nice if you dispensed with the old and got a new attitude.

And please don't ever again try to tell me that I am wasting my time. I will make that decsion and no one else.

OH BTW. Trying to help someone possibly solve a problem is NOT WASTED time

BillyBob

 

If it wasn't for experimenting and tweaking things, and thinking "maybe I can get this to work" or "how fast can this thing really go? ", " or "why? ", "why not? ", "what's over the next hill? ", and "let's check out the moon and drive a golf ball off of it!" (one astronaut did this, believe it was Apollo 15, he had the cart anyway).
Where would the human race be right now?

 

BillyBob - reread your own comments - I never used the word "time ", but you sure have talked about wasting your time throughout this thread. Congratulations. Would one call this sub-conscious, latent, "a "- retentive or what?

You sound like you are on a mission to prove your ol' buddy, luga was pretty accurate after all - take a hike with your own attitude. You have taken my comments way out of context and tried to put a totally different spin on what I actually said.

When you finally come down off your high horse, the smartest thing that cAH can do is to "trash that puppy and quit wasting everybody's remaining gray matter ".

I'll stand by my comments but you best get back to resolving this guy's problem. You've done a great job so far and have made excellent use of your time.

 

Suggestion!

cah1935 & billyboy trade services. cah1935 could check and fix any plumbing problems billyboy might have, (he is a retired plumber...he indicated this to me in a recent Private Message) and billyboy could fix the computer.

Any other spectators, please take the time to use the search function provided by this board and read as many of the 34 posts by cah1935 as you can.

 

Hey luqa

Your suggestion about switching places is an excellent one which gets applied around here quite often between Family and Freinds.

Some are better at electrical work. Some are plumbers. And some are just plain better at carpenter work.

But some of them don't ( and some don't want to ) know about Computers.

Works out absolutley GREAT

And keeps the financial end of things to a minimum of parts only.

BillyBob

 

Hard drive installed

Hey I had some time to invest today after lunch so I installed the rebuilt hard drive. I did great. when I got done formating I had the following at the c: prompt. Volumn in drive c: has no label, 2,555,665,216 bytes free. also I now have a D: drive. At D: I typed the following D:\>Setup.exe and I put the Win95 setup disk in the cd-rom drive and pressed enter. I got the following answer" Bad command or file name." what do I do do next?

 

If you did not setup any logical drives, the C: partition takes all the hard drive space, and you have a D: drive, in all probability that was the Ramdrive created in memory by the Win98 startup disk. Your CD drive letter would be E:\. When you choose Startup with CD rom support, you will get a message giving you the drive letter for the CD, watch for it.
E:\setup

 

D: VIT RAMdrive

You were so right, D: is the Ramdrive now there is no E: or F:.While loading I see the screen shows unit o, slave drive is detected. IRQ 15 I/O address is ox170. the screen saids to load disk # 2 win98. I only have one win98 disk. It saids load and press any key. When I press any key my computer hangs.Should the cd-rom drive be a slave or a master secondary drive?

 

the screen saids to load disk # 2 win98.

Now that is a new one for me. I know the message is on the SUD but I have never seen it displayed.

From the ( my ) Original 98 SUD.

:ERROR
IF EXIST ebd.cab GOTO EXT
echo Please insert Windows 98 Startup Disk 2
echo.
pause
GOTO ERROR

:EXT
%RAMD%:\extract /y /e /l %RAMD%: ebd.cab > NUL
echo The diagnostic tools were successfully loaded to drive %RAMD%.

This is all before the full Autoexec.bat is processed.

It is saving that he ebd.cab file does not exist on the floppy. That must be why I never saw the message. The ebd.cab does exist.

The ebd.cab contains the files that are loaded to the RamDrive.

IRQ 15 I/O address is ox170.

It looks like the CDROM driver is being loaded. But the autoexec.bat does not get to the point of loading MSCDEX.EXE

I also believe that the location of the CDROM in the BIOS should be set to NONE. If not set to none ( or auto ) the BIOS could be looking for a HD. I have had that problem in the past.

BillyBob

 

CD drives usually work better as a secondary slave vs primary slave. BillyBob is right about the settings concerning the HD settings in BIOS. It should say none for the CD where the CD is hooked up.
Look to see if EBD.CAB exists on the SUD. It hung up looking for the EBD.CAB .
After the contents of EBD.CAB are extracted into the Ramdrive, one of them is MSCDEX.EXE. This file is then installed into memory from the Ramdrive as a CD driver for dos. I believe it is necessary in addition to your driver.

 

No drive letter for cd-rom drive

The CD-rom drive was detected when loading however, there is no letter assign for drive. The EBD .cab is on the floppy. I have a 3 wire cable coming from the sound card to the cd-rom drive does this matter? If I took this hard drive out and installed it as a second hard drive in my other computer what would the setting for Bios be? would this mess up my cd-rom drive in my other computer. would the drive letters be assign auto maticly,could I then load wins 95 unto the small drive. Would I have to disable the virus program and disable virus in bios? I started to try this but got cold feet. I don't want to goof up my other computer because it would be goodbye internet and everything else.I'll try this when every thing else fails. I think I'm real close now all I need is a drive letter recognition. I must say this has been a real learning experience for me.What would the config .sys path look like device= A:/mtmcdai.exe /D:/mscd001
This my driver mtmcdai.exe and this is the name mscdoo1 what would I need in autoexec.bat C:/mscdex.exe /D:mscd001 or are these settings wrong?

 

config .sys path look like device= A:/mtmcdai.exe /D:/mscd001
This my driver mtmcdai.exe and this is the name mscdoo1 what would I need in autoexec.bat C:/mscdex.exe /D:mscd001 or are these settings wrong

A littel hint. make sure you use 0 ( ZEROS ) and not Os in /D:mscd001. You have zeros in some and Os in others in the above.

If the driver is actually on the floppy the config.sys line should read; ( no path needed )

DEVICE=Your CDROM driver /D:MSCD001.

These three lines follow the ones in my other reply. And are from the same SUD.

IF "%config% "== "NOCD" GOTO QUIT
IF "%config% "== "HELP" GOTO HELP
LH %ramd%:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001 /L:%CDROM%

The first two work with along with the first menu. The third handles the CDROM.

Other than getting the proper CDROM driver in the Config.sys the SUD should handle everything else with no changes.

As to adding the HD to the other machine in will ( or at least may ) mess up both HD letters and the CDROM letter.

I agree with you that I could get touchy.

One question.

Are you booting directly to the Floppy from a power off state ?

If you formated the C: drive using the /S switch this is a MUST DO to install Windows. I say this as I am assuming that you may have formated the HD using a Win98 SUD. And if you boot to and install Windows from the HD there is a good possibliity of getting the DOS boot files crossed up. And believe me you do not want to do that.

BillyBob

 

I know you don't want to put a bunch of money into that box, but to be honest I don't forsee a functional install on that 7+ year old 360Mb harddrive happening before christmas (2010).

Here is a link to a Ebay dealer who is selling Quantum Bigfoot 6Gb harddrives starting at $9.99 - I am providing this link because there is a free download of Ontrack Disk Manger for Quantum drives available. - I have used this to install drives on 486 machines and it has worked great. The Disk Manger partitions and formats in one shot and your ready to go.

BTW - I have bought several diferent items from this dealer, and all are still working flawlessly.

 

I believe the HD now being used is a 2.5gig devided into two app 1gig partitons. The 640 did go bye-bye I believe.

Also from the lasts posts from cah1935 it now looks more like the problem is with the SUD and the CDROM driver.

BillyBob

 

There is a work around to getting the CDrom driver going, now that I know you have another computer to put the HD into, and you have two partitions.
Leave the BIOS setting in the second computer set to AUTO for the HD's, let it auto detect the drive.
If the HD already in the second computer has two partitions, the drive letter assignments will be confusing: The original will have the drive letters C: (primary) and E: (extended with logical), the one you are putting in will be D: (primary) and F: (extended with logical) . If one partition exists on the original HD, the letter assignments will be easier to understand; C: (primary) then the second HD will have D: (primary) and E: (extended with logical).
This has to do with the type of partitions.
Installed programs on the original HD's logical partition, if there, will be affected, but only while the second HD is in.
The CD letter will be bumped to F: or G:, depending on the number of partitions. The drive letter assignments will be automatic.
If you have a volume name for each drive on the HD's, it will be much easier to know which one.
Copy the files in the Win98 folder and Drivers folder with the subfolders on the CD to folders named Win98 and Drivers on the second HD's logical partition. Or copy the entire CD, it will fit on a 1gb. Later you can delete all the folders except for the Win98.
This will make it possible to install Windows from one partition to the other. There are advantages in doing it this way. At a later point, when installing/updating hardware or programs it will not ask for the Win CD, it will go directly to where it was installed from, or if you need to format C:, you can then install Windows from the other partition as it won't be formatted.
Put the HD back into the computer you are trying to install windows on. Boot up without CD rom support. Type in D:\Win98\setup.exe. Have the hardware drivers handy on a floppy. If you need to get a driver off of a CD at this point, just use the generic driver from windows. You can change it after Windows is up and running.
Good luck!